I think to be honest that some of the stuff Microsoft have been working on behind the scenes is probably scaring the crap out of Apple and Google. There's not been a platform as holistic and complete as Microsoft's offerings so far and they are adding REAL value daily rather than just moving the chess pieces to great fanfare.
Oh and most problems are solved or canned so all we're doing is gluing things together and making it look pretty (which is what programming via abstractions is all about).
I would rather say it has become apparent over the last year. I say windows 8 marks the moment.
That's where Microsoft realized they needed to garner goodwill and at that point Google had so much global market share (web traffic, browsers, mobile) they could say fuck all to everything and anyone.
And they started doing just that. Anyone else remember the forced and sneaky adaption tactics that was Google+?