in my opinion microsoft developed the .net plat form in order to capture the web services market which was solely target by sun microsystems via the java platform previously thats my two cents
My view is that the virtual machine-based runtime architecture was the most important reason for creating the .NET platform. Also remember that Microsoft and IBM were the ones who originally developed the SOAP specification, not Sun Microsystems...
In my opinion .NET is 99% same as Java Platform. In .NET terminology JVM is called CLR (Common Language Runtime) providing everything we get in JDK with some inbuild webservices support. I read David Chappell book on .NET and I was amazed to see how much similar .NET is with Java Platform.
Don't get me started about those stupid light bulbs.