Steve Rubel points to a Reuters article that Microsoft will be switching over to XML as their default file format. This seems to be more evidence for what the technologists have been saying about 2005 being "The year of RSS." RSS being based upon XML.
I see XML is a metaphor for consumer choice. Consumers can choose how they consume web content by having it delivered directly to their RSS readers -- the pretty web design and other superficial graphical supplements are irrelevant when the "Content Will be More Important than its Container."
XML is also a metaphor for giving up centralized power and hierarchy. The fact that software giants are incorporating XML into their programs means that it'll make it easier for consumers to chose to take their content and use other third-party programs to manipulate their data...
This is empowering the grassroots, bottom-up approach of open source software by making it easier to create modular add-ons to the big-ticket products.
For example, Automatic Duck saw that Final Cut Pro's initial implementation of XML export had a number of stupid inconveniences, and so they made a free plug-in to improve the user interface of Final Cuts Pro's XML export feature.
XML makes it easier to use other Automatic Duck products, and their new XML export plug-in makes Final Cut Pro a more valuable product for the consumer. Both sides win. It's BOTH/AND -- Not EITHER/OR.
There's a trend of cooperation in the free market where business will based more upon symbiotic relationships than on total control and domination. The Institute for the Future even makes the counter-intuitive claim that parasitic symbiotic relationships can drive rapid evolution. Parasites may seem to be sucking energy from a system, but it will eventually provide some type of benefit to the energy provider that would have been impossible with hoarding access and control. New capabilities and possibilites emerge from cooperation.
This idea has been around for a while in nature, but it's an emerging paradigm for how people approach business. Business models will designed for community-based profit and not just private profit. You'll succeed if you can improve the quality of the network, and not just advance your own personal self-interest.
I think we're going to see companies start succeeding who play nice with others. Invasion species destroy ecosystems, and so it's healthy to have symbiosis both in nature and in the economy.
It's promising that software giants are starting to give up power to make it easier for their products to interface with third-party and open source software. Microsoft is incorporating XML into programs like Word and Excel, and Apple's editing software Final Cut Pro has XML export capabilities.
This doesn't mean that this pardons their faults, but it just means that they're now providing more opportunities to give the consumer more choice and for more open source solutions to start proliferating and make everyone's life a lot easier to "Get Things Done."