> But to clarify, Microsoft ultimately won the case on appeal and had the initial ruling against them overturned.[1]
This is an oversimplification of the appeal, as while the penalty against Microsoft was overturned, the appeals court did affirm several of the antitrust violations against Microsoft. In particular:
1. The appeals court affirmed that Microsoft's license restrictions preventing OEMs from pre-installing alternate browsers violated the Sherman Act.
2. The appeals court found that Microsoft's technical integration of IE and Windows was not a violation of the Sherman Act because Microsoft offered legitimate justification for why the integration was necessary. (When a defendant offers a legitimate justification the burden of proof shifts back to the plaintiff to show that the anticompetitive effect outweighs the justification. In this case the appeals court found the DOJ failed to do this.)
3. The appeals court affirmed that Microsoft's deals with ISPs to promote IE at the expense of other browsers violated the Sherman Act.
4. The appeals court affirmed that Microsoft's deal with Apple to bundle IE with Mac OS in exchange for the development of the Mac version of Office violated the Sherman Act. (Bill Gates threatened to pull Office for Mac if Mac OS bundled Netscape instead of IE.)
5. The appeals court did not actually address whether tying IE to Windows was an antitrust violation or not. They concluded that it could not be a per se violation, and the issue was remanded back to the district court for further analysis under the rule of reason which would have required additional proceedings, which never happened as Microsoft and the DOJ eventually settled.
6. The appeals court found that the DOJ failed to prove their claim that Microsoft attempted to monopolize the browser market, largely because they failed to provide sufficient evidence that Microsoft had a "dangerous probability" of success.
Finally, the reason the penalty was overturned by the appeals court largely had to do with the district court judge not following the correct legal procedures and failing to reasonably justify why such a large penalty (breaking up the company) was warranted. Plus they were really unhappy with that judge going and talking to the media about the case.
Yes, ultimately Microsoft was not broken up. After Bush was elected, DOJ policy changed and they decided to no longer pursue the breakup. But it's a bit misleading to say they won the appeal. It's more like: they won a couple claims, they lost a bunch of claims, and the overall penalty was deemed too harsh.
(Note: I skipped some details but the full text of the appeal is an interesting read: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=179876183890909...)
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That all being said, it's worth noting that most of the violations affirmed were related to Microsoft's attempts to unlawfully maintain their operating system monopoly which at the time had over 95% market share, not due to their attempts to dominate the browser market. And it's possible that if they had merely included IE with Windows and not taken extra actions to force other companies (OEMs, ISPs, Apple) to bundle IE over Netscape, they may not have have been found liable at all.
As applied to the current situation with Apple, it's unlikely that Apple will be exposed to the same liability because they simply don't have the level of monopoly power that Microsoft did at the time.