The article examines how Microsoft's proprietary document formats create vendor lock-in. While Microsoft's formats (DOC, XLS, DOCX, XLSX) dominate as the global lingua franca, they remain controlled by Microsoft and serve its interests.

Proprietary formats make data inseparable from the software that created it. Unlike open formats where any compliant application can reproduce documents faithfully, Microsoft's formats contain undocumented features and private extensions. Opening files in other applications often distorts formatting, creating "silent and persistent friction" that pushes users back to Microsoft Office.

Microsoft submitted OOXML to ISO standardization, but the process was highly contested with procedural irregularities. The resulting specification runs thousands of pages, describing Microsoft Office's existing behavior rather than a format designed for interoperability. Microsoft defaults to OOXML Transitional (the complex variant) while relegating OOXML Strict (the cleaner variant) to obscurity.

This dependency scales from individual inconvenience to institutional risk. Governments archiving documents in Microsoft-controlled formats delegate custody of institutional memory to a private company. True sovereignty requires open standards like ODF (Open Document Format), an ISO standard managed independently and natively used by LibreOffice.