[toomanythings2]

Microsoft was also fined $2 billion dollars by the EU in 2004 for anti-trust violations so it's not just the 1990s.

In addition, Microsoft was under US Federal oversight until 2011, but then had it extended another two years for failure to comply with the original court order. So let's not forget that.

[scholia]

The EU fined Microsoft for bundling the Windows Media Player, and forced it provide a version of Windows without the Media Player. Nobody bought it, so apart from providing the EU with some cash, it was completely irrelevant.

It was also characteristic of anti-trust suits in general. They are much less about whether you committed a crime, and more about whether what you did can be redefined as a crime many years later.

The DoJ supervision was extended over the readability of Microsoft's enforced documentation of communications protocols, which it was ordered to rewrite.

In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly blamed Microsoft. "Although the technical documentation project is complex and novel, it is clear, at least to the Court, that Microsoft is culpable for this inexcusable delay," she wrote.

But she also wrote that the company had been "overwhelmingly cooperative" in the years after the antitrust settlement, and that this latest extension should not be viewed as a sanction. http://www.pcworld.com/article/142004/article.html