Is Microsoft Charles Barkley?

In sports there have been countless athletes that have used tactics to get under their competitors skin whether through cheap shots a referee can't see or trash talk. Charles Barkely, Bill Laimbeer and others did this in basketball to draw fouls and get their opponent out of their rhythm and to do stupid things. This analogy came to mind when reading an article by Joel Spolsky on microeconomics that I posted about earlier about the hardware/software industry and how some companies have ignored economics in their decisions as they were blinded by their dislike towards Microsoft. Sun is a recent example but other examples include Novell, Oracle, Borland and Netscape. Unlike companies such as Intuit, Google and Yahoo who stayed true to their focus on their customer while competing against Microsoft, those companies and particularly their CEOs became obsessed with Microsoft/Bill Gates to their own downfall.