This is probably not in-line with what Microsoft look upon them selves. It is not only Microsoft this applies to, but they are a good example of greedy (good capitalistic principles).

Microsoft’s research policy
Economic hay say that a corporation should spend a big portion on their budget on research. But if you want to become filthy rich this is a waste of money. A corporation should instead let others do the research, and if and only if that company comes up with something you should by that company. This lets you spend the research budget on buyouts instead. It would also be more effective since you would not waste research efforts on all the things that do not turn out to be anything successful.

Programming is not making money
You will never become filthy rich by just being a programmer. The entire Indian subcontinent is learning various programming languages. A lot of people in the world are capable of programming. To become filthy rich in software one has to let other people deal with the trivial tasks of programming.

To become rich in software you have to focus on the end-user solution.
It is not how the software is programmed that matter, it has to be working, and following the given requirements and all that. But what will make the real difference is whether or not millions of people will be using the system. Figuring out how to push the product to the masses is the key. The software has to be a solution a lot of people can use, or it will solve some problem for a huge organization.