They handed Microsoft a monopoly on a silver platter. They were excruciatingly careful about all the hardware they used, but they didn't bother to get a second source for their operating system. Microsoft's monopoly exists because IBM screwed up. Since my space is limited, I'm going to skip over the 20 years Microsoft enjoyed a monopoly and get to the commoditization. The Internet commoditized data transmission the way the PC had commoditized computing hardware.
Software is just data, the cost of distribution of software suddenly, literally, dropped to zero.
Like IBM, Microsoft tried to consume the threat, by monopolizing access to the Internet with a proprietary Web browser. But like IBM's experience with the PC, Microsoft bit off more than it could chew. The Road Ahead didn't even mention the Internet, but after Netscape's IPO Microsoft caught on fast. They decided that if they could control the Web browser people used to access the 'Net, they could own the 'Net. But unlike the trail of Windows software companies that Microsoft had consumed or destroyed in order to grow faster than the PC market as a whole, the Internet had come from the Unix world.