MS was hostile towards competitors, not users/customers. You can run a VM of Windows 9x or NT and see how quiet the experience was. No pervasive spyware or ads to bother you while you work.
Had they had the opportunity, they would 100% have taken it. Windows was never about serving a good experience to customers, it was always about serving the Microsoft-owned experience to customers—and these two things are very much mutually exclusive.