Word is the perfect example of a lazy, mediocre product dominating a space through sheer inertia.<p>The current Mac version can&#x27;t even keep track of recently opened files. Working with styles is torture. (You can&#x27;t search them, you can&#x27;t group them, you can&#x27;t sort them, the ribbon selection seems to be random.)<p>The ribbon itself is an unusually eccentric example of software design.<p>A competitor could easily produce a leaner, better product. But it would never sell, because Word has so many corporate users that anyone who exchanges files with them has to use it too.<p>Locked-in products do sometimes fail, but they usually only fail to competing products from large companies. The textbook example is the move from QuarkXpress to InDesign, which only became possible because Quark were so famously greedy and lazy about Xpress they literally pissed off the entire print design industry.<p>Adobe not only had a better product, they also had the sales team and industry relationships to push it. Without those, it&#x27;s likely Xpress would still be Number 1.