Microsoft’s Latest Competition-Stifling Move. “There was a brief moment when the company’s adoption of XML had potential — to be a breakthrough in interoperabilty, a move away from the proprietary file formats that have been one of the major lock-in devices of the past decade. And Microsoft assured us that it wouldn’t pull the same tricks this time. ” from Dan Gillmor’s eJournal: “Once again, our favorite monopolist breaks a promise.”