[Phemist]

It's interesting, that second option seems too malicious, how would you even coordinate a common understanding of this?

Perhaps it's just enough in the grey-zone that it is a "cross that bridge when we come to it" issue and that they don't need to figure out the specifics of any laws/regulation, because if they are on the wrong side of it, in the past it has been proven that these types of regulations are quite toothless.

This specific issue on its face seems a security thing, where users are warned against installing software from untrusted (as defined by microsoft) sources. It very handily doubles as a way to scare users into not installing competitors for their own applications (like browsers and office packages), of course.

[jeffparsons]

Just look at Uber, for example. The opportunity cost of obeying the law in the various markets they entered would have far exceeded the cost of penalties they received in practice. So what did they do? They just flat out ignored the law globally, and it seems to have worked out pretty well for them.

Unless part of the calculus involves executives behind bars, I don't know what else we should expect from corporate behaviour; they're just following their incentives.

[Phemist]

I guess the Uber case is similar in ways but also quite different.

Uber was (relatively) vocal about their hope for regulation to catch up with this new world of taxi gigs ordered through an app.

And in the MS browser-choice case, the regulation was specifically designed for Microsoft and they had been found to be non-compliant once already.

How does that change the calculus? Clearly, not enough.

[Libcat99]

They were hopeful of regulations "catching up" because it hurts future competition. If new regs hit the books after uber has already enjoyed their growth, it's a lot harder for someone else to break in.

[mcv]

Consistent refusal to obey the law should result in fines of ownership of the company. Forced nationalisation. That's the only thing that will get their attention. They have too much money to care about fines.

[michaelt]

> It's interesting, that second option seems too malicious, how would you even coordinate a common understanding of this?

You can coordinate this with a coded message, such as:

"Our goal for 2023 is to make Edge a market-leading product, the best browser on Windows, and the customer's browser of choice. All executives ranked Vice President or above will receive $100,000 in shares for every percentage point increase in US browser market share this financial year."

Later you will be shocked - SHOCKED - to learn anti-competitive behaviour happened, when you were "just trying to encourage the OS and browser teams to cooperate on things like power efficiency and security"