Microsoft is one of the most innovative companies in existence.

While I will not go so far as so say Microsoft does not innovate, to say they are one of the most innovative companies on the planet is stretching the truth a bit. A large percentage of Microsoft's "innovations" are obtained by either mimicking the existing work of someone else or by outright purchasing the company that developed the technology. That is not what I call innovation. The only true innovations coming out of Microsoft have been oppositions to industry standards, such as ActiveX/COM/DCOM in opposition to CORBA/IIOP; market-fragmentation actions to maintain the dominance of Windows, such as Java extensions; and application/OS integrations to further bind individuals to the proprietary Windows platform. That is not what I call productive innovation.