Here's a little rant by the Editorial Director of IBM's developersWorks about Microsoft either adopting Open Standards or dying. I have to disagree.
First, if you read the latest Microsoft financial results, they're not hurting by any means. It's worth downloading the PowerPoint slides for FY2004 Q4 results and flipping through them. Growth of 15% is quite amazing although I bet the plummeting US dollar helped a lot here.
Second, Microsoft does support open standards. It's just very selective about what standards it does support. It's only going to support standards that fit into their whole business strategy. For example, Microsoft is big in supporting and driving the XML stack of standards since that is key to it's strategy. However, it has no desire to improve and advance HTML in any big way - a universal rich client is not in the game plan.
Third, the idea that open standards are the best solution is a red herring. The problem with an open standard is that it often slow to create and evolve and they are not always the best solution. Design by consensus tends to lead to over-engineering (X.400 anyone?) Microsoft will not and should not be restricted by always sticking to open standards. Defacto industry standards rule because they live in a much faster evolutionary environment.
Fourth, the "Open Standards or Die" proposition is only valid if the propriety non-standard technology doesn't add enough value above and beyond the open standards approach. Based on Microsoft's finanical results, enterprises are obviously finding enough value in their platform.