It can't be that bad of an idea because Microsoft is going to try to imitate it with "Windows Live". While at the same time trying to squeeze as much revenue out of their shrink-wrapped Office software as possible.
The status quo with Microsoft software is that you run bigger and fatter hardware under your desk each Windows or Office release to run bigger and fatter software on it. Google might stumble with their online software efforts but someone will eventually get it right.
You can certainly tell the difference on this thread between the people who write code and those that maintain it.
Note, I do neither (finance operations geek) but I can tell the difference. Netscape may have been right, just with bad timing - that happens a lot. Microsoft got a lot of their Window's GUI interface from Xerox. Right concept, bad timing.