The insanity was to abandon the advantage they had with VB/COM, in order to challenge Java on its own ground. They threw away the baby with the bathwater. The C# pivot also slowed down their desktop efforts pretty dramatically, doubling the blow.
They were lucky Sun squandered the opportunity they had engineered with Java, focusing on the hardware side and missing the boat on browser, virtualization and services. If Sun had bought Netscape and then focused on building something like Azure, instead of fighting the inevitable commoditization of server hardware, they would have eaten Ballmer's lunch.
They were lucky Sun squandered the opportunity they had engineered with Java, focusing on the hardware side and missing the boat on browser, virtualization and services. If Sun had bought Netscape and then focused on building something like Azure, instead of fighting the inevitable commoditization of server hardware, they would have eaten Ballmer's lunch.