[ghaven]

This misses the point. The real problem was the question of whether Microsoft was using its position as a major software vendor to warp the web browser market in ways ultimately highly detrimental to user experience. The popular answer is probably 'yes', as a generation of web developers cry out in despair.

The problem is that by bundling this particular application, and by its behaviour with that application (ignoring standards etc.), Microsoft was able to massively distort the web market based on its monopoloy position rather than technical merit. This affected the development of the web for years afterwards - even to this day!

If you agree these problems existed (I don't think it's a controversial opinion...), then the conclusion is precisely that MS should not be able to set the default web browser, because allowing to do so would be ultimately more damaging than giving users a slightly poorer experience when they have to install their own. This is a quantitatively different situation to that of many other default apps, where MS neither wants nor tries to monopolistically dominate a a massive emerging market segment - but if they did, perhaps the same questions would come up again.

Edit: So I guess the summary would be yes, MS does get to set lots of default applications, but this is exactly what the case was about. Should they actually be allowed to do so? Even if sometimes it's okay, what about the times where this lets them dominate for reasons totally unrelated to technical superiority?