They missed that boat because of a lack of vision. They lacked viaion because of their leadership. Nadella drove through some big changes in short timespan and demonstrated a keen sense of what was important for MS. E.g. applying embrace and extend to OSS is a classic MS play that neither Ballmer nor Gates was prepared to make happen long after it was obvious it needed to be done. Enter Nadella and we now have vs code, ms github, and an actual ff-ing linux kernel that actually comes with windows 10 ready to run docker and a lot of other stuff. Also Azure is now runs mostly linux and things like sql server can run on linux. To top it off, MS is now once more exciting developers. I've not seen that level of excitement about anything they do since the mid nineties. That's leadership.

Google at the same time seems to struggle to convince developers that they need to drop their fancy languages for a bastardized and outdated thing called Dart that basically can only be explained as a ginormous not invented here syndrome combined with sunk cost fallacy. Just a minor example of things Google tries that have an obvious ticking clock in terms of them killing it in favor of something else. Also what's up with having 3 operating systems for devices and dragging out picking one out for half a decade? That's Conway's law in action right there.