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Comment by astrodust | Hacker News Reader

What made them win the PC war was what landed them in federal court.

By controlling the Windows ecosystem they could "disrupt" any competitors trying to produce applications, pushing Office while alternatives struggled, and they could use Office to push Windows.

Charging OEMs a flat "per-CPU" fee for licensing meant that Microsoft was getting paid regardless of the OS being shipped on the system. They eventually had to stop doing this, but came up with other ways of achieving the same effect.

There's no Office for game consoles. No matter how popular your title is, another platform will have an exclusive of their own that's just as compelling. They can't strong-arm OEMs because they are the one making and selling the hardware.

Linux has all the technology needed to overcome Windows, lacking only fit and finish.

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What landed them in Federal Court was bundling a browser (the most advanced at the time) with their OS for free. Over a decade later, we all know that a consumer OS that ships without a browser is an incomplete product (as BillG testified in the case).

What Apple is doing now with dictatorial actions in its app stores is just as, if not more, overreaching IMHO. Does that make it OK? No.

But keep in mind why people were actually interested in what MS had to offer back then. Just as we still buy Apple products despite their anti-competitive behavior, people bought MSFT products in the largely because the product addressed their needs better than others and the price was right.

They did more than bundle a browser, they gave OEMs financial incentives NOT to bundle Netscape.

The reason why Apple's dictatorial actions don't bother me is they're only a small part of the market. If I want to develop a mobile web browser, I can still use Android and have a market.

With Windows, Microsoft WAS the market.

With the tablets there was a time (roughly a year) when Apple was the market.

> What landed them in Federal Court was bundling a browser (the most advanced at the time) with their OS for free. Over a decade later, we all know that a consumer OS that ships without a browser is an incomplete product (as BillG testified in the case)

no. it was never a problem that Microsoft bundled IE or any other product in with their own software. The problem was leaning on other companies, that Microsoft was in a business relationship with, to encourage those companies to exclude software offered by Microsoft's competitors.

Not just the browser.

They also had pricing schemes with OEMs that made it impossible for the box builders to release any products with alternative OSes preinstalled (as it would raise the price of their Windows license). And a box builder that couldn't sell a competitive Windows machine was effectively useless.

Hitachi backing out of pre-installing (the technically amazing) BeOS is what eventually killed the company. Years later the shareholders won in court but by then Be was dead.

My personal favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-...

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