I’m no expert, but Phillipe’s predictions seem very well founded.

With ‘Web 2.0′ (I dislike that nerd-term), its success stories are companies that focus on user inclusiveness and user-driven, almost daily evolution (Google, Youtube, Wikipedia, Ebay etc).

But the Web 2.0 philosophy is diabolically at odds with Microsoft’s business model - forcing users to pay for upgrades every 3 years, desktop-focussed, non-interoperability, etc. This business model was mind-bogglingly fantastic for Microsoft in the 80s and 90s.

But those days are now over.

“Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop is as relevant to the future of computing as Union Pacific’s dominance of the railroads was to the future of transportation in the twentieth century.”
Reasons why Microsoft is history:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=13

“There is a new game afoot. The companies that succeed in the Web 2.0 era will be those that understand the rules of that game, rather than trying to go back to the rules of the PC software era.”

The single monolithic approach may prove to be Microsoft’s undoing:
http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=2