Bullet Points
Well... it's hard to knock those bullet points. Selling out is good for the owners, when the offer's right, but it's not always good for the company, and when the buyer is Microsoft it never seems to be good for the end users. (Well, that's my opinion, yours may vary.)
"Microsoft can’t decide what is and isn’t strategically important..."
You could probably stop right there, it seems to me. MS has enough power and money to "choose poorly" and still get away with it, many many times. Just give away the product, "integrate" it with Win/Office, and/or buy out the competition. When you have these options, strategy is sort of irrelevant. But I'd hate to depend on Microsoft for my internet searches, or as my primary web portal, or as my only secure login provider, or... nightmare scenarios all.
Depressing just to think about it.