Mistake or missed opportunity? I think deciding not to get into the eBook market in 1997 when Microsoft employees had created the first eReader tablet "because I don't want to compete with Amazon" which only sold dead-tree books at the time was a gigantic missed opportunity. Had they seized that opportunity they would have been in the platform space of the Kindle and iPad about a decade before Amazon and Apple. Google the blog posts and videos with former Microsoft employee Bill Hill, the inventor of ClearType.