[nazgulsenpai]

Some of us lived to see Microsoft be found to be in violation of antitrust statutes and forced to break up only for them to become the behemoth they are today. Its hard to get excited about the Google since its already been proven with enough power and influence, not too much of this matters a whole lot.

I'm optimistic but quite jaded.

[bawolff]

Besides everyone else pointing out that they werent forced to break up - i think the more saliant point is they aren't the behemoth they once were.

Maybe its chance or maybe it really did work, but MS is not the evil monopoly it once was. Still very succesful but not a monopoly.

[safety1st]

It worked. The lawsuit had a tremendous impact on Microsoft's culture and had them running scared from the government for years. It made them less ambitious, more bureaucratic and reluctant to just buy up any Internet startup that posed a threat. Source: I was working there at the time.

[willywanker]

What worked was the decline of home PC users in favor of smartphones; Microsoft was never able to do well in this space despite buying Nokia's phone business (let alone dominating it as they still do on the desktop). Modern Microsoft has entirely switched to being cloud focused from just an OS vendor - their big money spinner these days is Azure, followed by Office 365 and then only Windows. It's also why Windows 10 and 11 are so user hostile compared to earlier versions; Microsoft doesn't have to care about a good user experience and will inevitably push the OS itself to a subscription model.

[umanwizard]

Microsoft was never forced to break up, they just had to change some of their business practices.

[AlbertCory]

to be pedantic: the trial judge did order a breakup. On appeal, that penalty was struck down.

[CSMastermind]

Which is honestly a shame. Even as a budding software engineer I didn't really understand the Microsoft anti-trust case at the time. It's only now that I appreciate the problem and do think it would have been better for everyone, Microsoft included, had they been broken up.

[Retric]

That’s the joke.

[AnimalMuppet]

Microsoft was forced to limit their behavior. I don't recall them being forced to break up.

Did I miss something?

[dmoy]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C....

> On June 7, 2000, the District Court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy.

Then

> Ultimately, the Circuit Court overturned Jackson's holding that Microsoft should be broken up as an illegal monopoly. However, the Circuit Court did not overturn Jackson's findings of fact, and held that traditional antitrust analysis was not equipped to consider software-related practices like browser tie-ins.

[AnimalMuppet]

Ah, yes. I had forgotten that.

[Aunche]

It wasn't exactly intentional but the results were great for competition. They were forced to invest in Apple and to stop bullying them, and now Microsoft is completely dominated by them in terms of personal computing.