History is littered with corporate walking corpses that owned markets at times that are are coasting or dead. Just look at how long AOL raked in billions after they long since ceased to be relevant to anything at all. I am not saying that MS is this, but they are feared to become one if they don't find a way to become much more relevant to how many people see the future going.
I long for a time when data flowed freely along pipes and tubes.
Microsoft is a big place. I predict we're going to continue to create and ship new stuff, and it will vary in all degrees of 'open'. But in my experience as a 3rd party outside developer, it's pretty rare that stronger engagement leads to things being more closed.
Am I in opposite world? People want microsoft software on their mobile devices because an open source OS is too "closed"?
I would believe what you actually want is an alternative to google apps on android...
It would be more accurate to say Microsoft is willing to plow money into a product long enough for that product development to get past the barriers to success that are inherit in a 130k person software company.
Fantastic in what regard? Can I put my favorite linux distribution on it? Can I even write and release software for it under GPL? Without "applying" to microsoft and waiting for them to "approve" it?
Maybe it's just me but I don't really see why I should buy hardware that is 100% controlled by microsoft when it can't do anything that a general purpose computer couldn't do...
Frankly, it works very well for what it was designed to be. 4-5 years ago it provided an awfully intuitive platform to plug into your TV and stream video, tv shows and music from your home network or increasingly from the Internet. Almost no configuration necessary, rarely has issues, and fixes for those issues are pushed fast and often.
It's a home media PC for people that don't have the gumption or wherewithal to build one, and a much more pleasant interaction than many/most of the other HTPC distros out there. And really, almost no one wants to go through building a home server and HTPC, thus the continued advances in "smart" TVs and game-consoles-as-HTPCs.
Worse than Google or Amazon's dominance of the marketplace? The squashing out competition that they do? I don't think so - Microsoft could be on a par perhaps, but certainly no worse.
I have a long-running joke with friends when we come up with ideas, that we'd better not do it as "Google's going there soon". Thankfully it seems to have slowed down its expansion a bit in the last few years.
Also the power they wield with search and adwords, to make businesses thrive or die - especially if they play the rules (cf RapGenius). Though I don't expect it would be any better if Bing was the dominant search engine.
tl;dr: I don't like semi-monopolies. Small, competing and thriving businesses are the best.
It's extremely dangerous to think if Microsoft as weak. They have enormous profits and revenue - far, far bigger than Google, for example - that are secure far into the future. They are willing to plow this money for an almost indefinite amount of time into any product to brute force it to success (see Xbox) and they are willing stoop lower and employ underhand tactics to an extent that nobody else in the industry will match. So fear not, Microsoft is a long way from weak. We should worry a lot more about the possibility of them actually becoming completely dominant again than we should worry about the relatively benign prospect of them becoming weaker.