You must not have been around for the 80s and 90s' "desktop wars." Microsoft did everything they could to undermine innovation and they didn't help businesses, they locked them into inferior technology that cost more and undermined productivity. The Microsoft you grew up with was not the Microsoft of Gates and Ballmer. Those were dark years.

That Microsoft created new APIs, runtimes, and frameworks not for technical reasons but in order to lock customers in or disadvantage competitors. That's a big reason why Windows is an unmanageable mess of inconsistent interfaces and DLLs--they were short-term tactics, not well considered approaches.