Slashdot Mirror
Internet Explorer Antitrust Case Set To Expire
jbrodkin writes "The judgment in United States vs. Microsoft is on the verge of expiring, nearly a decade after antitrust officials ruled Microsoft unfairly limited competition against its Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has two more weeks to fulfill the final requirements in the antitrust case, which is scheduled to expire on May 12. Although Netscape ultimately didn't benefit, the settlement seems to have done its job. From a peak of 95% market share, by some estimates Internet Explorer now has less than half of the browser market. Microsoft, of course, filed its own antitrust action against Google this week, and even commented publicly on the irony of its doing so, noting that Microsoft has 'spent more than a decade wearing the shoe on the other foot.'"
Windows, on the other hand, was an OS which had a browser integrated for no other real reason beyond crushing the competition.
I don't understand why everybody seems to think there were sinister intentions behind Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. What does increased browser market share really accomplish? Let's imagine for just a moment a world in which Internet Explorer has never ever been bundled with an operating system, and Windows has never ever had an internet browser bundled with it. Do you think the world wide web would have had nearly the effect on the world as it has in actual reality? How many people would even know about that newfangled internet thing, and how many people would have taken the time to find a way to access it? Sure it would have caught on eventually, but the internet has only been around for 20 years or so and look how big of a part it has taken in everybody's lives. I submit that it would not have progressed nearly this far by now had Microsoft not given every Windows user a web browser out of the box.