Whoever thought that Microsoft would not be up to every trick to push their document format, should read some of these blog postings. To quote one of the blog, in which a blogger writes about the standardization process in Portugal:
Let me remark the fact that representatives of Sun and IBM [obviously against OOXML] didn’t attend to [a decision meeting] because there were no chairs for them. […] Microsoft alone wasted three seats. ASSOFT wasted two more, business partners of Microsoft wasted a few more spots. [There were a total of 30 seats]
[…]
The President, Microsoft representative, tried to shut me up twice. At the second attempt I accomplished my promise of speaking louder if I had to in order to be heard, refusing to be cut off.
Nothing more to say here.
And I was pointed to another excellent blog post which outlines the technical difficulties to actually modify OOXML Excel documents outside of the Office 2007 suite. An eye opener, in my opinion.