I remember seeing this on TV and not understanding why microsoft was threatened with a fine if they ship IE by default on their products. Actually I still don't. Nobody ever stopped me from downloading another browser on windows, anyone who wants to do it will do it. So people did have a choice, they just didn't know they had it, and it's their problem, not microsoft's! Could someone explain this to me?
The EU just followed what the US courts said during Clinton. Clinton turned MS into a whipping boy. In retrospect, the courts were wrong. Netscape's profit model made no sense. People didn't want to pay for commodity software like a web browser. MS had every right to release a free one bundled with their platform. The web isn't some optional thing. A browser is part of every OS now. On top of it, the deal MS signed d…
> Clinton turned MS into a whipping boy.
No, he didn't. Bill Gates and Co got away with what amounted to a misdemeanor, when they could easily have been nailed with multiple felonies. Bill Gates once bragged openly that MS got away with a slap on the wrist. He knew what he was talking about.
> the deal MS signed didn't let it control OEMs
What are you talking about? MS controlled everybody, including Intel. One of the revelations of the anti-trust trial was that at one time, Intel wanted to give the ISP business a shot. Gates objected because that was competition he didn't want to face.
Recall that Steve McNeally of then Sun Microsystems once had this idea of the network as the computer, what we now call Cloud computing. MS drew a hammer at it because of the obvious threat to its cash cow - Windows and Office.
MS had (still has) a noose around the necks of OEMs. Those guys have to pay MS for every PC they ship, even once that don't ship with Windows. Do you know what effect that had on their desire to ship any other OS on their PCs?
> The Netscape/MS fight wasn't worth it. The government should never have stepped in.
BS! If the govt had not stepped in to curtail the activities of an evil empire, technological progress, especially in the software arena, would have been set back a lot more than it has. And it took a democratic administration to do it. No republican administration was going to do it, because, after all, they are always good for business.
> Tech is generally a meritocracy. People can just migrate to whatever software they life.
That and the test of the last paragraph of your comment is proof that you're a paid shrill.
Yes, tech can be a meritocracy, if the playing field is level. Unfortunately, it often is not, because tech companies can get into deals that are anti-competitive and anti-consumer.
Recall that a few years ago Intel was fined heavily because it had made deals with companies that discouraged them from using AMD's processors. Do you know how damaging deals like that had on AMD and on consumer choices?
Well-informed people can migrate to any other software they like. Unfortunately, the vast majority of users at that time were not well-informed. Remember that we are talking of a time before commercial Internet/Web. Even today, there are people who still think that their OS is Internet Explorer and that Yahoo is a browser.