They built the better product? Capitalism did its magic and they are winning. I applaud him.
Bullshit.
Do some actual research. Microsoft was not the best product, not by a long shot. CPM was far superior. MS had limitations that gave installers and users royal fits, such as the 64K main memory limit, 8-bit words, and a plethora of peripheral problems when it came to getting drivers to work. Do you know how long it took for MS to support color graphics, a graphical user environment, or even SOUND (other than beeps)? It took years after Apple had already been marketing all of that.
Bill Gates built an empire because (1) he figured out how to leverage "licensing" versus "purchasing" of his software, and (2) he negotiated exclusive contracts with PC manufacturers and builders to include MS DOS on ALL PCs they sold -- at a huge discount -- regardless of any other O/S's they installed, essentially blocking "better" O/S's from the market. Who is going to pay for MS DOS AND another O/S at a higher total cost per unit?
Gate's springboard to the big time was when IBM asked to get his DOS for their PC line. The kicker was they also needed the BASIC compiler to go with it, but Bill didn't own it. After trying to negotiate with the BASIC designer (and his wife), the IBM execs asked Bill to write his own version of the compiler, which he did. It was LICENSED as "PC DOS" and lead the market for home and business PCs. Two years later, Bill started marketing MS DOS to compete with PC DOS, and IBM sued. Turns out, IBM didn't understand what "licensed" versus "owned" meant. Once the 2 year exclusive license expired, MS was free to use the same DOS base and compete. For a long time, most places offered your choice of PC DOS or MS DOS, since they were almost identical except for a few command syntaxes or names.
Then, Gates started licensing his MS DOS as I said above, so it was required to be on every PC sold. That pretty much gave him exclusive access to the PC-clone market. Only IBM-branded PCs came with PC DOS.
When Windows 3.0 was released, it SUCKED OUT LOUD. Nobody used it unless they had a critical application that required it. Otherwise, we all used DOS or Macs.
Then Win 3.1 was released and was deemed "useable." It was still DOS with a GUI frontend, but at least new Windows apps actually ran on it. When Windows 3.1 came out, Bill Gates privately said that it would have failed had it not been the most pirated piece of software in history (at that point). Once everyone had a legal or illegal version of Windows, they were locked into using Windows-compatible applications, like MS Office apps.
I was an IT professional during this whole part of MS's growth. I understand you have no knowledge of the reality of how Bill Gates built his empire. Your opinions are just wrong. Do more reading and less typing. I recommend you watch a documentary or two.
Gates was a good programmer, but he was a genius at marketing and creating a software licensing empire.