It's interesting how Microsoft have been very influential on web standards and development in some key ways. Web Outlook as the first AJAX application, and here in the early history of SVG. Yet never managed to turn that into actual technological or market leading success.

The best I can make of it is that they do have some wickedly clever engineers in there, but appalling management. While web outlook was redefining web application development practices, Hotmail was devolving into a decaying has-been of a service. Where it looks like VML could have become a key web technology, giving Microsoft a market leading position in browser support and authoring tools, instead it became a proprietary ghetto product and they were one of the last browser makers to grudgingly support the new open standard.

Great technology. Incompetent leadership.