From Dan Mabbutt,
Your Guide to Visual Basic.
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This is a chapter about how to make Microsoft's software into a TEAM !

The secret to Microsoft's success has often been rolled up into one phrase, "They own the desktop!" By that, people mean that the terrible trio of Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer are what most people use on their desktop computers. None of this happened quickly or by accident. It happened because Microsoft has followed a long term architecture for their software that emphasized integration and the ability to develop cross-platform applications.

Note:This lesson also features a larger than usual table of links to VSTO (more about this later) and the Excel and Word object models since the essence of success in programming all of these is good documentation!

In practice, Microsoft's successful architecture model has meant:

• A version of Visual Basic
  (VB 6, VBScript, VBA)
• COM components
• Windows

But when Microsoft introduced .NET, everything changed. Bill Gates was quoted at the time as saying that they had "bet the company" on .NET and that's no exaggeration. If .NET had failed, Microsoft itself might have failed as well.