This is mostly immeasurable and unanswerable. They've had lots of good/better tech that's succeeded in the marketplace (Active Directory, DirectX) and hasn't (windows phone 8) for a whole variety of reasons.
They have tech that's solid, but more niche, like .NET/C# which is applied more in the enterprise than internet oriented software. The windows NT kernel is a solid piece of engineering compared to other OSes (it was originally designed/developed by Dave Cutler who came from DEC and did VMS and applied/improved a lot of the concepts there), but has often been hindered by shit thrown on top of it.
Microsoft has done a lot, both good and bad. But a lot of the reasons they're as successful as they are is for the "bad" stuff, like extreme support for backwards compatibility, getting "good enough" to market while other companies languished in perfectionism or distraction (cough cough apple before 2000).
They have tech that's solid, but more niche, like .NET/C# which is applied more in the enterprise than internet oriented software. The windows NT kernel is a solid piece of engineering compared to other OSes (it was originally designed/developed by Dave Cutler who came from DEC and did VMS and applied/improved a lot of the concepts there), but has often been hindered by shit thrown on top of it.
Microsoft has done a lot, both good and bad. But a lot of the reasons they're as successful as they are is for the "bad" stuff, like extreme support for backwards compatibility, getting "good enough" to market while other companies languished in perfectionism or distraction (cough cough apple before 2000).