If Sherlock Holmes saw it, Microsoft would be "the dog that didn't bark"

Editor's note: Microsoft Word dominates professional writing not because it's superior, but because institutions, publishers, universities, and governments, mandate its use. Authors face disappearing text, crashes, and subscription traps, yet cannot switch freely: competing platforms lack licensed fonts and .docx compatibility. What looks like choice is really coercion; writers draft elsewhere but must return to Word to meet professional standards. Microsoft's entrenched control mirrors past monopolistic behavior, prioritizing lock-in over stability, innovation, or user needs. This leaves the writing process and self-publishers shackled to a flawed, profit-driven system.
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Writers Are Trapped in a Quiet, Almost-Monopolistic Software Industry

January 23, 2026

Bill Gates was not acting alone. He's obviously just the frontman and likely never wrote a line of code in his life. Microsoft's dominance (see U.S. v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001)) was built through alignment with powerful institutions that wanted standardization, predictable licensing, and a single vendor at scale. Governments, corporations, and universities adopted Microsoft software because it simplified procurement and control. Once those institutions standardized on Microsoft formats, the market locked in. Gates became the face of the system, but the momentum came from institutional backing, not individual brilliance or secret plotting.

Writers are repeatedly told that document software is a competitive marketplace. The lived reality tells a different story. For authors working on long, serious manuscripts, the industry functions as a soft monopoly built on format dominance, font licensing, and institutional coercion rather than technical excellence.

Microsoft Word dominates because it controls the default. The .docx format is the required submission standard for publishers, universities, government agencies, and professional editors. As one writer bluntly summarized on Reddit, "Word is the industry standard; if you are querying or send your manuscript out to editors or beta readers, they almost universally require it be in Word." This requirement forces compliance regardless of whether the software is fit for purpose.

Technical instability is not hypothetical. Word for MacOS has a documented history of rendering failures in long documents. Users repeatedly report text vanishing during active editing, only to reappear when scrolling or changing views. One Apple Support user described the issue plainly: "While using MS Word, the text becomes invisible randomly. It only re-appears when I scroll… The moment I begin typing, the text disappears again." Similar reports appear on Microsoft's own support forums, spanning multiple macOS and Word versions, with users confirming that updates do not resolve the problem .

Despite these failures, writers cannot easily leave. Alternatives such as Google Docs, Zoho Writer, Pages, and LibreOffice are often more stable, but they are structurally disadvantaged. One of the quietest yet most effective barriers is font licensing. Fonts widely regarded as "basic" for publishing, including Times New Roman, Arial, Garamond, Calibri, and Cambria, are commercially licensed and bundled with Microsoft products. Web-based editors cannot legally include them without expensive agreements. This causes competing platforms to appear incomplete, even when their underlying technology is sound. Font licensing experts have noted that control over font file distribution is one of the few enforceable levers available to foundries, making licensing a powerful gatekeeping mechanism.

The result is a compatibility trap. Writers draft elsewhere, but must return to Word to meet professional expectations. As one publishing guide put it bluntly, "If you plan to work with a professional editor or submit to a publisher, you'll want to have your manuscript ready to go in Word. Many require that format." This is not consumer choice. It is institutional pressure.

Subscription pricing compounds the problem. Features that should be foundational for long-form writing, such as robust style control, indexing, and stable rendering, are increasingly tied to paid tiers. When failures occur, responsibility is deflected onto users. Forum threads routinely show writers reinstalling operating systems or entire Office suites just to regain basic functionality. One user described the only effective fix as "un-installing Microsoft Office, re-installing Windows OS, and then re-installing Microsoft Office." This level of intervention would be unacceptable in any other professional tool.

This structure mirrors earlier monopolistic behavior without crossing clear legal thresholds. Microsoft was previously found to have abused standards control to suppress competition in adjacent markets. The document ecosystem exhibits similar dynamics, even if it no longer attracts regulatory scrutiny. Network effects, proprietary fonts, and institutional dependence suppress meaningful competition without requiring explicit exclusion.

Writers feel this pressure more acutely than most users. Long manuscripts expose weaknesses that short business documents conceal. Stability, not novelty, is the primary requirement. Yet stability does not increase subscription revenue. Lock-in does.

There are realistic solutions. Publishers and academic institutions can formally accept open formats alongside .docx, reducing coercive dependence. Font licensing for legacy editorial fonts can be modernized to prevent artificial barriers to entry. Regulators can treat document formats as infrastructure rather than private leverage points. Writers themselves can reduce exposure by separating drafting, editing, and final layout into distinct stages, minimizing reliance on any single platform.

The systemic problem is that once Microsoft software became embedded across government, defense, and intelligence institutions, aggressive antitrust remedies grew politically and operationally difficult, leading regulators to establish liability while avoiding structural changes that would have disrupted systems they themselves depended on. The "dog that didn't bark" here is the lack of harsh structural remedies, despite clear evidence of monopoly power and anticompetitive behavior. The court found Microsoft guilty, but because government and institutional dependence made a breakup or radical intervention too disruptive, the remedy was muted.

The frustration expressed by writers is neither exaggerated nor isolated. It is the predictable outcome of an industry optimized for control rather than reliability. Writing software should serve the work. Today, the work serves the software.