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.'"

Comments

Expired and stagnant.

[ozmanjusri]

The settlement did nothing. It was Mozilla and Firefox which revived competition in the browser market.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[RoFLKOPTr]

The settlement did nothing. It was Mozilla and Firefox which revived competition in the browser market.

This. The field of web browser development was almost completely stagnant before Mozilla came along. Since then, the web has made massive strides in usability and function, which would not have been possible without Mozilla (and later Google). No antitrust settlement could have caused new browsers to emerge.

Re:Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[Archangel Michael]

I blame Microsoft for creating a marketplace that made Linux popular. Yes, one of the biggest reasons why Linux became successful, especially on the server market, was because there was no viable alternative. That created the opening that allowed Linus' creation to grown and be nurtured for years completely ignored by Redmond. It was too small, and wasn't a threat. It was a toy, just a college kid's cute experiment.

Then the internet bubble hit, and it was expensive Netscape Server or Less Expensive IIS, and the pesky upstart OS and Apache, both FREE (libre, gratis), Small ISPs who couldn't afford Unix or Windows NT servers started using it. And against all odds, it became popular. Holes were patched quickly as they were found, showing how nimble Open Source Code could be, and better than proprietary code that was constantly being hacked while websites waited for updates from the vendors.

I know, I was there, in one of those ISPs (Yay Slackware). Since then, I've done Debian, SuSE, RedHat, Yellowdog, Ubuntu and a couple roll your own distros. I credit, almost entirely, the monoculture that was Microsoft, for the rise of Linux. Not because I like Microsoft, but rather because I can look back and see the utter apathy that the monoculture rested upon.

Re:wrong

[phantomfive]

Now, my memory is that the contract was based on more than the number of machines they shipped. That's what Intel got convicted of not long ago. But Microsoft was going even farther, limiting OEMs.

I remember back then our purchasing manager told me about a conversation he had with some OEMs (we didn't want Windows), and they basically said they couldn't give us computers without Windows because of Microsoft. If you're influencing your resellers like that, then you are abusing your monopoly position. This is part of how they crushed OS/2 warp, which was a far superior OS at that time.

IE vs Something

[alphatel]

This was a poor anti-trust suit which didn't address the real problem at the time - Microsoft giving OEMs rebates for NOT installing other OSes. IE had very little to do with the bad practices at MS. In the interim, yes Google really has been much more anti-competitive in a myriad of ways, but nothing as prominent as Intel paying to NOT have AMD chips or Ma Bell charging you more because they owned everything.

Re:wrong

[TheRaven64]

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?

Were you not alive in the '90s, or were you just not paying attention? Microsoft saw Netscape as a real threat. Microsoft had two products that accounted for over 95% of their total income: Windows and Office. No one bought Windows because they liked Windows, they bought it because it ran the software that they liked (that's not to say that they disliked Windows - although a lot did - just that the OS was irrelevant to most computer buyers). If web applications started to take off (and Netscape was aiming to make their browser a thin client interface) then there was a lot less of a reason to buy Windows.

Microsoft wanted to avoid this, so they introduced ActiveX. This let you write incredibly rich web applications, because you were basically just shipping a Windows binary to the client and running it in a browser. Internet Explorer existed to push ActiveX. With ActiveX established, web applications would just mean Windows applications that happened to be delivered over HTTP with a little bit of HTML glue, and the Windows monopoly would be safe. There was no chance of getting other browser makers to support ActiveX, because they also supported other platforms and it was against their interests to promote a single-platform technology on the web. IE was given away for free, back when Netscape was only free for noncommercial use. Microsoft dumped it at below cost to encourage people to use it and to drive the competition out of business.