I can see it now - Visual Assembler.

Again, I disagree. I do think that anything which doesn't support or otherwise enhance or promote the use of the Windows OS will wind-up on their dump list. In the final analysis, Windows is MS's only strategic weapon. Anything else which promotes it's use (e.g. IE, SQL Server, Office, Visual Studio) does just that whether it makes money or not. Had IBM been smart and adopted this strategy with OS2, I would venture to say that OS2 would be the dominate OS today.

This is not to say that MS doesn't periodically review the impact of a particular product with respect to it's importance to Windows. They would be fools not to. I would imagine that they have some fairly complex analysis models to do this.

>MS has given up on markets in the past and they will in the future. Where is MS Fortran? How about their Assembler? What about Bob? Cinemania? They just sold off their Sidewalk service. The list does continue. If they perceive a market as not making money, they will give up on it.