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?
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 didn't let it control OEMs so that laptop that's full of shitware that slows Windows down and gives it a huge attack surface is not something MS could fight until recently with Win8. The government empowered OEMs.
The Netscape/MS fight wasn't worth it. The government should never have stepped in. In the end the best product wins. I, and everyone I know, got Chrome via downloading it. Not via some fancy choice menu.
I think the truth here is that Netscape had a lot of friends in the government and Clinton's DOJ wanted to make some career defining kills. Bill Gates was an obvious target. It was wrong for Clinton to attack MS. It didn't stop IE6's dominance, it didn't revive Netscape, and it didn't fix anything. If anything, it made everything worse.
Tech is generally a meritocracy. People can just migrate to whatever software they life. MS wasn't stopping Firefox or Netscape from being installed. Lets give our companies room to compete. Lets not applaud heavy handed legislation from either the US or the EU. I mean, google fucking maps can't even be seen in Spain due to corruption. Governments are just as corrupt as business. Except government is an unstoppable monopoly with guns.
The lawsuit should have been over their Office suite. (And no, in the end, the best product did not win.)
Its sort of like Google search now where when you search for "ann arbor map" you get a giant beautiful link to another Google property and a few riffraff links to other competitors that basically nobody ever clicks on because it would take effort.
This is exactly where Microsoft was in the 90s / early 2000s with browsers. They had a dominant desktop share and they directly embedded IE and although there were alternatives, clicking takes effort and nobody did that. They just used IE. The EU forced them to provide an explicit, easy option to reduce that advantage.
Given Google's dominant share in search, it would not be surprising to me to see the EU force them to change this for the same competition reasons.
Also, it was a great way for the EU to shake Microsoft down for billions of dollars and ensure there was no one company more powerful than the EU, but I'll leave that to the conspiracy theorists.
How much more difficult would that have been if IE wasn't included by default with Windows?
In fact back in the 90s, my Linux box would only receive updates via magazine cover disks.
No, I'm not saying Microsoft should have done anything specific. My post quite clearly says that a lot of useful software was still easily available to those who's internet access was a premium; and nothing more.
However now I think about it, I'm pretty sure I got my copy of Internet Explorer 4 (the one that integrated IE's Triedent engine into Windows Explorer) from a .Net magazine* cover CD. So it's not like browsers weren't also distributed via the aforementioned method.
(*not to be confused with Microsoft .NET)
> Where and how do they draw the line to being a useful distribution and alienating their users? For example, certain ICMP utilities were included by default with Windows.
Now you're just arguing for the sake of having an argument.
If a dominant player bundles their browser (as a component) in their OS, people become less and less aware of the browser as a possible and separate "product", and will of course use the dominant one as default - this is (and effectively was!) bad for competition and evolution(any web developer can tell you the pain this caused and still causes today).
Does your calculator interact with anything else but your computer? Same with file manager (SMB excluded)?
Now lets look at the browser, it interacts with different servers, via the HTTP protocol, and the documents they serve via many different technologies such as HTML, Javascript, Java, XML, Flash, along with others. 'Back in the day' Microsoft did a very strong push to tie IE in with Windows, then push developers to use ActiveX on websites so they would only work with Microsoft products. There was no HTML5 multi-platform interoperability, if you wanted to visit a huge number of sites (many government ones too), you used Windows on X86, and you used IE. Even worse, after the early versions of IE, they dug its hooks deep in to the operating system so it became WindowsIE, you didn't have one without the other.
I could argue that the TCP/IP stack is "bundled" with the operating system, and it's something that's very difficult to change (if not impossible without recompiling the kernel). Network engineers have probably had to put up with different TCP/IP stacks using different congestion control algorithms, impacting fairness of bandwidth usage on their networks. So by the same pretense, shouldn't TCP/IP stacks require the same choice that Microsoft were required to offer with browsers?
Dr-DOS and the Berkley screen saver stuff are two other situations that spring to mind, both of which resulted in legal cases, but the size/scope of MS by the time the Netscape thing came around was probably the tipping point (considering their previous behavior already demonstrated a pattern which showed no signs of stopping).
It was taking anticompetitive steps to defend an existing monopoly, and to leverage an existing monopoly to monopolize another market.
Its like complaining that one person gets arrested for shooting a gun when another doesn't, not noting that what the first person was actually arrested for was murder by way of a gun, and what the second person was doing was shooting targets on a shooting range.
There are four bases for the complaint, two under Sec. 1 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and two under Sec. 2 of the Act.
1. Unlawful Exclusive Dealing and Other Exclusionary Agreements in Violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act (deals with ISPs, Internet Content Providers, and others that traded favorable promotional placement in the then-monopoly Windows OS for commitments not to license, promote, or distribute non-Microsoft products, particularly browsers.)
2. Unlawful Tying in Violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act (distributing the browser, a separate product based on market demand, etc., with its monopoly Windows OS system.)
3. Monopolization of the PC Operating Systems Market in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act (willfully maintaining monopoly power over that market by "by anticompetitive and unreasonably exclusionary conduct.")
4. Attempted Monopolization of the Internet Browser Market in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act (targetting "software products that have the potential to compete with or facilitate the development of products to compete with PC operating systems and thereby to erode Microsoft's Windows operating system monopoly" by way of "including tying and unreasonably exclusionary agreements, in order to obtain a monopoly in the Internet browser market".)
Note that a key issue in all of these is Microsoft's then-existing monopoly power in the PC OS market and how it was defending or leveraging that in different markets -- without that monopoly power, much of what they were doing would not have even arguably been an antitrust issue.
Browser+OS wasn't the issue, it was one of the mechanisms -- unreasonable and anticompetitive action to maintain an existing monopoly, and to leverage that monopoly into a monopoly in another market, was the issue.
> However it still doesn't explain why Internet Explorer was the target when there is so much other software that was bundled with Windows, which too had for profit competitors?
Because the browser was the area where the government felt they had the best case for two key features: (1) that the tying, etc., was intended to leverage the existing monopoly to monopolize another market, and, (2) that the tying, etc., was intended to neutralize a threat to Microsoft's existing monopoly.
Bundling two products together isn't generally illegal. Doing so as a means to leverage a monopoly in one market to monopolize another, or to defuse a threat to an existing monopoly (and, a fortiori, to serve both purposes simultaneously) is a different story.
> Those people who exclusively used Internet Explorer as "the Internet" would too have used the bundled mail client (I can't remember what it was called back in the day) exclusively too and seen that as "the email"?
The bundled email client wasn't an issue because it didn't exist yet -- Outlook Express wasn't bundled with Windows until Windows 98, which was still pending at the time the lawsuit was drafted (the complaint notes at para. 57: "Beginning in or around June 1998, Microsoft will introduce to the market the latest version of its operating system for Intel-based PCs, Windows 98.")
IIRC the latest was Windows Defender.
At least, that was the fear.
Since Windows, for all intents and purposes, was a monopoly, a huge part of the discussion was about whether IE was an integral part of the operating system and therefore MS actions were not to be considered as competition in a different market but simply innovation in the existing OS market. Applications like Calculator had been part of operating systems for well over a decade by then and no-one was shipping any OS without one so there really was not a basis for comparison. Browsers, however, were completely new. Netscape, the first widely adopted consumer grade browser, seemed to be doing very well as a stand-alone application. From today's point of view, you could argue that no operating system would ever ship without a browser but that was not clear at the time. A similar idea would be, in say 20 years, BitCoin lockers becoming an integral part of operating systems. Not obvious today, at least not to anyone outside the niche community of enthusiasts.
Clearly, the courts got it wrong, in that browsers are part of the OS today (just as much as the Calculator). However, MS' ability to put Netscape out of business really did slow innovation down overall for a really long time. It took a long time for the market to correct itself and have the better products win. In fact, it took another monopolist (Google) trying to protect its business in another market to come in and accelerate the pace of innovation.
TL,DR: Courts shouldn't be in the position of deciding technology vision. Not because they do not have noble intentions but because they do not have the expertise.
This situation was very different than when an oil company uses their monopolistic position in refineries to choke competing exploration and retail companies. Or when a manufacturer of telephone equipment uses the profits from its monopoly in that business to drive out competitors in its telephone service business. Clearly, in these scenarios, it was clear (and remains clear) that the monopolists were using resources from one business where they were clearly dominant to out-compete other companies in separate (even if adjacent) businesses.
Technology is a very tricky area for the law largely because it is fast changing. Situations are cropping up far faster than the laws can be modified to address them and so the courts are pretty much forced to sand-off the edges of existing statutes that were designed for other situations and hope for the best.
Furthermore, a big part of Microsoft's motivation for making the browser "part of the OS" was exactly to try to blur that line for the court. I am therefore highly skeptical of using "it's now part of the OS" as a reason that the court got it wrong.
The reason I say that is that it allowed Chrome to make serious inroads and become a much more dominant browser. Chrome comes from Google, a company whose entire business model revolves around getting people to spend more time on the Web. So they have a vested interest in pushing the Web toward being as rich a content platform as possible so that people spend more time in their Web browser and not in other applications.
So they did that. They made Javascript more performant, they pushed new standards for producing more attractive and responsive pages, etc. And makers of other browsers, who might not have done the same because they're not driven by similar incentives, had to start hurrying to keep up.
Microsoft not only used its OS monopoly to stifle competition, in many cases, it used it to kill many competing products and services. Steve Balmer once boasted that he'll stop at nothing to kill Netscape.
If you were around during the Clinton years when the US filed an anti-trust case against MS, you'd have been surprised at the tactics that Bill Gates and Co used to kill competition.
Those guys were despicable.
Oh, you want to bundle Netscape with your Windows PC? Each copy of Windows will run you $80. If you decide to not bundle Netscape, it'll only be $30.
I'm also reminded of Linux/desktop bundling. IIRC, MS tried (and I think succeeded) in their licensing terms require Windows licensing based on PCs shipped, not Windows PCs shipped, so even selling a Linux-only desktop still required an MS-tax, meaning it was more expensive to sell a Linux desktop than a Windows desktop (at least for some of the big players like Dell, HP, etc).
Netscape was the sizzle and you pay money to get a browser to surf internet.
Microsoft decided to package IE for free on Window.
Internet was wild west and mysterious. There's hardly any books on it and information wasn't traveling as fast for the masses to know much about internet.
But they do know there's this IE thingy that will give them internet.
IE destroyed netscape, very few people had a clue there was an alternative browser...
Hence this was deem as a monopoly.
Hell when I was a kid I didn't really know much other than netscape and all of a sudden IE. It didn't occur to me that there are choices but the fact that IE was a part of window and it just works out of the box. I moved to mozilla when IE was slowing down.
But the point was it was so integrated with window that it was apart of it, it felt natural as if the internet was apart of microsoft.
And in fact microsoft acted as a gate keeper of the internet for years that was their business goal. Their OS control stuff on the PC and that's how they made money. Which is why they lost to Google when they double down on their model. The way they acted and their many moves to monopolize it, one of which was IE.
The grand dream has long been to have a set of standards which web browser designers and network infrastructure designers must design to. In reality, standards development and compliance has a lag time to it that brings frustration to those who need web sites for their business models. So, in all practicality, they will design and test for perhaps one, two, or three platforms - as popularity may guide - and make use of non-standard methods where standards-based methods are lacking.
Add to this what others have observed, that the typical user knows little to nothing about what a web browser is, or even cares to know.
Companies that manage to achieve popularity for their internet technologies - such as a web browser, among other things - tend to have stronger voices and more powerful influences on standards committees. That gives them a competitive edge in that they can push for a standard where their products are already or nearly compliant with, thereby forcing others to expend energy (cash + time) into whatever reverse engineering projects needed to comply. Alternatively, the stronger voices can also induce more heel-dragging.
In the meantime, companies that have the popular technologies - such as Microsoft, especially in the 1990's - can more easily make sales to the businesses requiring web sites, for either internet or intranet needs. And consumers find their internet surfing experience generally satisfying with the home computer as they got it (again, especially in the 1990's, that was MS Windows + Internet Explorer).
Microsoft was uniquely positioned for dominance. They made the most popular desktop OS, and equipped it with a ubiquitous web browser (for both Windows and Mac OS back then). They then also had the server technology, software development tools, and a "portal" to funnel consumers to advertisers and shopping sites. Basically, they were leveraging their software technology and market position to get into the same business that Netscape had just started. They succeeded tremendously, and basically squeezed out much of the competition, including Netscape.
(Again, not advocating, just explaining)
As far as Android goes, Google has no monopoly on the phone business.
That doesn't mean I believe they well split them up - nor does the resolution say that, it's just a recommendation - but it does mean they're increasing the pressure on Google, and so potentially on Android as well.
[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/2014...
As for not mentioning Google directly, that's not really a great puzzle. Google is the only search engine with any relevance in a regulatory sense, and MEPs have mentioned it before. Of course, they must remain impartial, but it's not DDG they're worried about :)
Duh. Because neither one had a monopoly.
Think of it this way, it's akin to a car manufacturer selling cars with labels that state that anything other than XYZ branded gasoline will cause damage and void the warranty. Sure, maybe it won't cause damage and sure it may not stand up in court that it voids the warranty, but most people aren't in the position to know that, nor should they need to be in the position to know.
We ... the community of technology savy ... are very frequently remiss to ignore that not everyone can be, nor should have to be well informed about technology. Think of if Martha Stewart claimed that her recipe will only turn out if you use Greenest Pastures Milk when you are trying to hobble together a cake to impress your family. Are you informed enough about the intricacies of milk that you would know that you can use other milk brands?
Sure, you may scoff and say that you know enough about milk to know that it's not true, but do you know that some brands don't have additives or certain types of fat that may collapse your batter?
Other stereo manufacturers, who sell stereos got mad, and basically convinced the government that Ford has a monopoly and should be forced to offer consumers a choice in stereo.
Microsoft never warned people that using another browser would "cause damage" or void warranty. They simply gave away something for free, that was previously a paid product. Their dominant market position gave them leverage to essentially wipe out the competition. This, depending on your market philosophy was either the right move to protect consumers, or an example of special interests influencing government to effect markets (IMHO it was probably both).