C++ is complex enough that there are significant differences in the language itself. Even nowadays it matters which compiler you use (clang, gcc, vsc) and that’s with MS trying to cooperate.

Additionally it was basically self sabotage to rely on Microsoft products as a tech company — less so if software was a supplement to your main product, which is how MS got the market share in the first place. It’s like those “delivery companies” that have exclusive contracts with Amazon in terms of how stupid it is. Microsoft products had shitty licenses that scaled horizontally per instance so it was only really worth it if you’re B2B or some other way to push the licensing costs to your customer. If you were using IIS in your “software as a service” you were handicapping yourself.

Not to mention memory usage and speed are not the main concern in a website because 99% of the processing time is taken up by the network communication delay, so using C++ is yet another way to handicap yourself in terms of time to market.