lots of companies buy smaller companies, there's consolidation in the marketplace - it happens all the time ,silly! they do it through swapping shares, buying the company out for cash or stock, or the vendor sells his stock, or if its a privately held firm the promoters sell the firm. yeah, yeah everyone knows about these, and im not talking about these deals.
the standard of microsoft is very ordinary. it isnt even remotely priced right.
if you buy their office suite and the premium OS - for that price you cant get the whole PC or a low priced laptop for that deal! that's VERY expensive.
the high price encourages piracy, and microsoft soft pedals on piracy because they want marketshare - they will make noises about piracy but will not clampdown, because linux will come into picture then. for eg: the new asus eeepc initially came with linux, that scared microsoft, and now they are allowing windows xp to be sold (despite xp having a deadline this june!).
vista is bloated, all the whiz bang is bettered in linux and compiz with ordinary hardware. people are used to the microsoft way, which is why there's reluctance to try out anything new. thankfully, things are changing for the better, and if the monopoly is broken with persistence, we might see linux come out of the shadow of microsoft hegemony and prove an alternative to microsoft.
