One major problem with tech journalism is that most of it is based on regurgitating marketing materials and press releases. Microsoft for decades has spent huge truckloads of cash on marketing campaigns to burnish their image, from traditional advertising to astroturf comment campaigns across tech journalism boards. Being a prime source of tech advertising dollars, it was rare to find a PC magazine that was willing to bite the hand that fed it and independent commentary was flooded with astroturf. (The Natalie Portman/grits trolls weren't the only reason Slashdot introduced its moderation system.)
So as expected the comments at this Huffington Post article on Microsoft are filled with inaccuracies about tech history in the U.S.
For example IBM didn't fall behind in the computer business after licensing their tech. The PC Bios was reverse engineered and rebuilt by competitors like Compaq. IBM at the time was a bit busy due to Federal anti-trust restrictions, but I'm sure that today's IP laws and Roberts' Supreme Court would have put those IBM PC-clones in their places and never allowed Compaq or Gateway or Dell to ever bloom in the market.
There are also the usual comments filled with the nonsense that Microsoft has never been a monopolist (signed a consent decree, which was followed by a conviction in court due to continued anti-free trade business activities) and that the government's anti-trust action against Microsoft isn't the reason Microsoft has had troubles dominating new tech markets, but rather it's the invisible hand of the marketplace and competition. Remember government interfering in the marketplace is BAAAAAAAD, unless it's to hand out no-bid cost-plus contracts and support for "risky" "always-profitable or a free government bail-out" consequence-free financial instruments.
But even worse than the usual astroturf by Microsoft's marketing team is that the actual article can't even get the basic history right.
Most famously, when Netscape offered a Web browser for free, Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, effectively inserting it smack on to the screen of the vast majority of the world's desktop computers. Suddenly, Microsoft controlled the primary gateway to the Web, with all the attendant opportunities.
Netscape didn't offer a Web browser for free. Netscape sold Navigator. You paid money for your internet browser. This was fine until Microsoft licensed the code for Spyglass Mosaic. Microsoft's license fee for Mosaic was a percentage of money made on sales of Mosaic-based IE. But Microsoft's piles of cash were constantly being replenished by monopoly-rents on Windows and Office, so they could afford to give away IE as a loss-leader, which at the same time would mean paying no license fees to one competitor, Spyglass, and undercut the major revenue stream of another competitor, Netscape. (Once Spyglass was on its deathbed, Microsoft handed them an $8M settlement over the license fees.)
The fact is that the US and EU have handcuffed Microsoft from extending their traditional license bundling from their biggest customers (no, home users of Windows are NOT Microsoft's real customers, OEMs are) in the PC channel to the big manufacturers in the mobile space for phones/tablets/personal entertainment handhelds. This means it's a lot easier for a WindowsPhone7 vendor to also ship phones with competing mobile operating systems as compared to a Dell, who is prevented from offering Ubuntu on almost its complete product line due to licensing restrictions with Microsoft.
Personally I don't see Microsoft going away. Their products help sell the PC upgrade cycle as every version of Windows and Office require greater processing power and there are way too many PC vendors who would suffer if business and home consumers weren't buying replacement PCs every few years.
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