WinFS was marketing through vaporware. MS were scared of ZFS making into OSX and had to show something to say "look, we aren't so much behind the others" so less people would be tempted to migrate. They do it all the time. Last thing I perceived as being that was the ARM support for Win8. I would be very surprised if it materializes as a product, but they just had to say "look, we are not chained to x86".
Longhorn being all managed code (Java envy?), WinFS (every-other-modern-filesystem-envy?)... The list goes all the way back to Windows for Pen Computing (GEOS-envy?). They make outrageous claims and launch so-so stopgap products so that corporations have an excuse not to move away from Windows.
That may be how it looks from the outside, but from the inside that's not what it looked like at all. The WinFS team Truly Believed in what they were building. They tried to get Office on board with coordinating data through there; tried to get the OS on board; tried to get all the app partners together to make the whole "queryable store with all of your information and explicit relationships between all items" vision work.
But, the tech just couldn't get there, no matter how well that team delivered. They were in the worst possible space. Below them, they had huge dependencies on the .NET framework, which was at the time proven for small applications but still in its infancy scaling up to a system-wide service, and WinFS was not the top-tier internal client that Avalon, SQL Server, and many others were. Above them were a huge set of application dependencies, none of whom wanted to make a bet until they knew WinFS was a winner (playing dependency chicken -- you're on our schedule because our VP demands it, but I'll only do my work when you show me that everyone else has done theirs).
Of course, I was just in developer tools at the time and only saw it as a third party, so my view could be a bit off. But I'd caution against assuming that there is some amazing marketing organization at MSFT that is carefully concocting ill-scoped and ill-planned projects just to maliciously steal airtime from your favorite other projects. The reality was quite different. Sometimes, projects fall short of their plans. And if they're ambitious, sometimes becomes often.
I don't think Microsoft's developers are guilty of this. I have several good friends in there (we agree we are on "the Other Side of the Force") and I am sure they do their best to build great products and, sometimes, they do succeed (I don't give SQL Server the same harsh criticism I give Sharepoint - shrugs - or Exchange).
Unfortunately, it's not the tech guys who are running the company. What products get announced and how they are pitched is not up to them. And those who decide the roadmap don't care if a new technology is shipped or even if it's possible to deliver what they specified, as long as it helps them get their bonuses. There is a high correlation of what gets announced to current tech fashion. That indicates either that MS product roadmap is uncannily tuned into the IT zeitgeist (so that you can deliver stuff when fashion demands it) or that actual planning is shallower than would be needed to really be in that position.
> Unfortunately, it's not the tech guys who are running the company
I can believe that is the case now. Things had been becoming more marketing/business driven even when I left back in ~2006. And I was in Developer Tools, which was much more run by the tech guys than the "profitable" parts of the company :-)
WinFS was marketing through vaporware. MS were scared of ZFS making into OSX and had to show something to say "look, we aren't so much behind the others" so less people would be tempted to migrate. They do it all the time. Last thing I perceived as being that was the ARM support for Win8. I would be very surprised if it materializes as a product, but they just had to say "look, we are not chained to x86".
Longhorn being all managed code (Java envy?), WinFS (every-other-modern-filesystem-envy?)... The list goes all the way back to Windows for Pen Computing (GEOS-envy?). They make outrageous claims and launch so-so stopgap products so that corporations have an excuse not to move away from Windows.