Yes I was. I worked in that stifling environment when anything not MS related was dismissed out of hand. Where MS's own marketing exhorted everybody to replace their 'legacy' unix systems with e.g. the wonderful system of Biztalk, Exchange and IIS.
Yes, constant vigilance so that they never regain that position again, as I'm pretty sure they desperately want to.
I doubt Microsoft wants to reign as a dark lord again at the moment - rather, they're attempting to grow their business through use of open technologies, like Google back in the 2000's. Although if any MS products/services become too dominant, I have no doubt that (like any other big company in such a position) they'll fall to the temptation to exploit their dominance for more money and power.
It's not Microsoft that's evil -- it's people and their capacity to be corrupted by inordinate power.