Microsoft's story isn't that different from the Google one. Microsoft had a Java language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B). Arguably, they had a better language designer in Anders Hjelsberg, as well as a lot of component-based development experience from COM, that enabled them to build a platform that was in many ways better. Things like WebForms were relatively stunted as model for web development and would be replaced by MVC aligning to what the world was mostly doing all along.