ESRI is just a greedy corporation that wants to monopolize the sector with stupid proprietary formats, incompatibility with open standards and crappy software. They buy companies, and if that isn't possible, make their own mediocre product which everyone will use because it is integrated and because of name building.
They don't care about the consumer. They don't care about GIS. All they care is cold hard cash. They are just a bunch of Ferengi.
But not only ESRI is like this, also ERDAS, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung.... It's just how the world is.