[QUOTE="ImportBMWRacer"][QUOTE="ZIMdoom"]I'm not sure how this impacts anything. The whole antitrust thing has never been an issue because Bush came into office and pretty much dropped the whole thing. So MS was let off with a slap on the wrist at worst.
The reason Apple and Google have risen above MS has nothing to do with the antitrust. MS has always been successful because they had a stranglehold on the OS market. ANything else they tried to do has always failed if they couldn't tie it back into Windows. Apple, on the other hand has managed to develop a whole string of very successful and market changing products like Ipod and Ipad, etc. What does MS have? Zune? Please.
Google has rapidly risen because they have been able to make money and success on markets nobody really focused much on before, like Search engines and street maps and cell phone software.
BOTH Apple and google have been successful because of their innovation and creativity and willingness to take risks. These are things MS has never been good at and never been successful with ever. MS has always been about buying other people's ideas, tying it into windows, and then using that market to choke out competition. The problem is that the prevalence of PC's and OS's for PCs has fallen in control. People now have way more options for technology and getting onto the internet than PCs and the OS tied to those PCs. Which leaves MS way behind and with little to no idea of what to do.
As a result, you see them desperately trying to play catch up and copy what others are doing. Zune, windows 7 for smartphones, tablets, etc. The only success they've had so far was with the 360, and even still, when the original Xbox came out, MS spent a lot of time and money trying to prove they were the "me too" console to the PS2 by trying to buy up a lot of IPs that were once PS exclusive. But look at now, after all that moneytheir top games are games that are original to them.
* AJAX * Web browser component usable by any app * OLE * Spreadsheet Pivot Tables * Tabbed spreadheets (since then, copied by other apps such as browsers) * On-the-fly spell check in word processors * LINQ (the upcoming tech that will be in C# 3.0 and VB9) * Video codec innovations that have led to VC-1 being the premier codec for HD-DVD and BR discs. * Mouse scroll wheels * Mouse GoForward/GoBack buttons * Ergonomic mice (I recall the days where you had to press down on a mouse while moving it in order to move the cursor; Microsoft ended that nonsense). * Ergonomic keyboards * Office 2007 UI * Mac Office floating palette UI * TerraServer (precursor of Virtual Earth, NASA WorldWind, Google Earth) * Ability to alter compiled code while debugging it * User Agents * Wizards * Intellisense * Answer Wizard technology in Office Help * ClearType * TrueType (collaboration with Apple) * Bob (yeah, it failed in the marketplace, but it was innovative (too much for its own good)) * Dynamic HTML desktops * Taskbar * Alt-Tab to switch apps * Lots of small innovations in .NET that when combined equal large cumulative innovation. * ActiveX (yes, it had security issues, particularly before XP SP2, but is great in an intranet setting) * Net-DDE, the first tech to allow clipboard functionality over LAN * Singularity * Combining the Back and Forward history buttons into one navigation stack control in IE7 * Photosynth * XPS (does everything that PDF does, adds graphical effects that PDF lacks, does it in a smaller file size, and does it using XML so the files can be manipulated via XML parsers) * Windows Live Contacts (being developed by Danny Thorpe (legendary programmer at Borland, who jumped to Google, then 4 months later went to Microsoft)) * A bunch of little stuff in IM via MSN Messenger * OneNote (I don't think there's any other app really like it (and those that try to be like it aren't anywhere near as good), particuarly when used on a Tablet PC) * Mac Word 2004's notebook layout and microphone support * Zune's WiFi (yes, the RIAA only allowed 3play/3day sharing, but its use will grow into other areas) * First console to have a harddrive (Xbox) * Browser runs in a sandbox (IE7 on Vista) * First browser with anti-phishing tech * Multi-core/CPU calculations in Excel 2007 * XNA * Vista's ability to allow the user to increase RAM simply by plugging in a USB 2.0 flash drive * First OS to support delayed clipboard rendering * First OS to have a 3D Sound api for games * Shadow Copy * Media Center Extenders (which iTV looks to be a copy of) ~scobleizer~ Outdated, yet still plenty of innovation there. Not to mention DirectX should be a godsend for any PC gamer. Unification is HUGE, and MIcrosoft is the one who gives us standards that allow for ease of use, cheaper & greater products. 
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