[recoiledsnake]

Most of the companies you list failed to keep up with the changing marketplace and withered off by being complacent, while Microsoft doggedly kept improving their initially poor offerings(remember the adage, the 3rd version of a Microsoft product is when it gets real).

IE5 was actually better than Netscape at the time which got bogged down in a rewrite. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

With more nimble competitors like Intuit with Quicken, Microsoft didn't make too much headway with Money. Same with Adobe.

To see an example of this playing out now, look at the Xbox versus Playstation. Sony(and Nintentdo) has been scoring a lot of self goals lately.