[nolok]

Your starting point is wrong there: the DOJ wasn't against them for making it free, but for bundling it with their OS.

They could offer it for free all they want. Similar in the EU, they weren't against them for it being free, and once they stopped bundling it and windows media player, they were off the hook (even though they still offered them for free).

[bmelton]

There's room for improvement here. The case wasn't against them bundling it with their operating system, they're perfectly free to do that. It wasn't about them being a monopoly either, which also is perfectly allowed.

The DOJ was against them as a result of abuse of monopoly power. Using their market dominance with Windows, they attempted to strangle out Firefox by demanding that their reselling partners would not also bundle Firefox on their Windows-based computers. If they did bundle Firefox, they would lose their Windows certification.

Free = allowed

Bundling = allowed

Monopoly = allowed

Leveraging partner relationships to unfairly disadvantage a competitor = antitrust violation.

[adventured]

The browser was ultimately mid-level on the list of grievances the DOJ had with Microsoft. That's why MS can bundle IE and Edge with the operating system today and nobody cares, including the US government.

If all Microsoft had done is bundled a free browser with the OS, it would have never stood up in court in terms of anti-trust prosecution. It would have been a laughable case.

What the DOJ got them on, was restraint of trade issues with OEMs, restrictions on API access, deep integration of IE into the OS (lying about being able to remove it), and market place conduct through leveraging their monopoly, leading to (in the DOJ's opinion) harm to consumers. Microsoft also basically taunted the bull in the countless ways they tried to jam the government, the ways they acted like assholes at every turn (including to the judge), the quotes that came out on things they said about competition, etc. They ended up with nearly everyone against them and looked like the ultimate bullies. If you want to have a bad time, be a monopoly and pretend you're more powerful than the US Government, and pretend you can stone-wall them.

[drzaiusapelord]

>That's why MS can bundle IE and Edge with the operating system today and nobody cares, including the US government.

No, the only reason MS is suddenly bundling more, including Anti-Virus, is because the judgement expired in 2011.

>If you want to have a bad time, be a monopoly and pretend you're more powerful than the US Government,

Or from a realpolitik stance, if Netscape has more friends with the Clintons than you do (which they did), you're going to have a bad time. A lot of "careers" were made at the DoJ over this asinine case, that changed nothing for the better.

[bmelton]

That is incorrect. Microsoft has always been allowed to bundle things, except for the brief period between the original verdict and the appeal.

Bundling was the surface issue, but the antitrust violation was their undue exercise of monopoly power by refusing to let vendors bundle non-Microsoft software and using their Windows-compatible certification program as the stick to that particular carrot.

From Wikipedia on the settlement: "The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who will have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.[24] However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future."

[dragonwriter]

> Or from a realpolitik stance, if Netscape has more friends with the Clintons than you do (which they did), you're going to have a bad time. A lot of "careers" were made at the DoJ over this asinine case, that changed nothing for the better.

Its kind of amusing that you point to such a "realpolitik" explanation and yet would leave out that the reason it changed almost nothing at all (for better or worse) was that the Bush Administration, which was more MS friendly, came to office at the end of the case, and the Bush Justice Department abandoned any effort toward imposing any significant sanctions.