I don't think an old anecdote about GO/WfP sheds much light on the birth of .NET.
Microsoft wanted the goodness of a managed platform, while having the freedom to evolve it and generally make it a) not suck as much as Java, and specifically b) be better at interoperating with existing (Windows) software. .NET clearly wasn't rushed out the door as a panic response to Java. .NET arrived years after Java & J++. MS just realised that managed was the way to go for a lot of development activities.
Java was and still is available for desktop programming, but by now C# has clearly evolved to be a better language, and .NET a better platform for developing (Windows) desktop apps.
The situation with Java is even stronger than "MS just realized": MS was /forced/. Back then, MS thought Java was great, but looked at it as a language and execution engine as opposed to a dream about "write once, run everywhere", and so released J++, allowing developers of Java applications to use a replacement toolkit that bound to native Win32 widgets. This caused them to get sued, and the result of the case was that they lost their license to Java. J++ 1.1 seriously came with a dialog when you ran it apologizing that they were legally required to stop distributing the application, and that you should look into alternatives. Thus, .NET was born.
I don't see how your elaboration on the history contradicts anything I said. This is all common knowledge. Totally understandable that Sun tried to lock MS out of tailoring their platform to Windows, and totally understandable that MS would want a good managed platform, instead of going with a flawed compromise system they didn't control.
I do not feel like the goal of my comment was to contradict what you said, only to clarify and strengthen it: the people you are arguing against believe that Microsoft built .NET to damage Java, and demonstrating that not only did they choose it because it was "the way to go" but that they were actually /forced/ to do so, is a much stronger way to undermine that belief.
Microsoft wanted the goodness of a managed platform, while having the freedom to evolve it and generally make it a) not suck as much as Java, and specifically b) be better at interoperating with existing (Windows) software. .NET clearly wasn't rushed out the door as a panic response to Java. .NET arrived years after Java & J++. MS just realised that managed was the way to go for a lot of development activities.
Java was and still is available for desktop programming, but by now C# has clearly evolved to be a better language, and .NET a better platform for developing (Windows) desktop apps.