Why would anyone imitate Microsoft Word?

When I write in Microsoft Word, it's like dictating to an imbecile. It constantly changes the capitalization, spelling and formatting of what I'm writing in ways I don't want. I can't believe that Word has become the dominant word processor and there are no viable competitors. There is an opportunity here, and OpenOffice, AbiWord and others are missing the opportunity by trying to act as much as possible like Word. The emperor has no clothes!

I hope Apple's iWork pages has some potential to shake things up. It looks promising. But something tells me it's not the answer.