[humpt]

I remember seeing this on TV and not understanding why microsoft was threatened with a fine if they ship IE by default on their products.

Actually I still don't. Nobody ever stopped me from downloading another browser on windows, anyone who wants to do it will do it. So people did have a choice, they just didn't know they had it, and it's their problem, not microsoft's!

Could someone explain this to me?

[drzaiusapelord]

The EU just followed what the US courts said during Clinton. Clinton turned MS into a whipping boy.

In retrospect, the courts were wrong. Netscape's profit model made no sense. People didn't want to pay for commodity software like a web browser. MS had every right to release a free one bundled with their platform. The web isn't some optional thing. A browser is part of every OS now.

On top of it, the deal MS signed didn't let it control OEMs so that laptop that's full of shitware that slows Windows down and gives it a huge attack surface is not something MS could fight until recently with Win8. The government empowered OEMs.

The Netscape/MS fight wasn't worth it. The government should never have stepped in. In the end the best product wins. I, and everyone I know, got Chrome via downloading it. Not via some fancy choice menu.

I think the truth here is that Netscape had a lot of friends in the government and Clinton's DOJ wanted to make some career defining kills. Bill Gates was an obvious target. It was wrong for Clinton to attack MS. It didn't stop IE6's dominance, it didn't revive Netscape, and it didn't fix anything. If anything, it made everything worse.

Tech is generally a meritocracy. People can just migrate to whatever software they life. MS wasn't stopping Firefox or Netscape from being installed. Lets give our companies room to compete. Lets not applaud heavy handed legislation from either the US or the EU. I mean, google fucking maps can't even be seen in Spain due to corruption. Governments are just as corrupt as business. Except government is an unstoppable monopoly with guns.

[Eric_WVGG]

Agree that in hindsight web browsers was a dumb thing to take down MS over. It was difficult at the time to make the claim that a browser-less computer would someday be effectively useless, but that point came.

The lawsuit should have been over their Office suite. (And no, in the end, the best product did not win.)

[AnimalMuppet]

Do you know that Microsoft was bribing websites to include features that Netscape would not render properly? How does that fit into your "tech is generally a meritocracy" view?

[icantthinkofone]

And here we go again. The lack of knowing what a monopoly is and what it can and cannot do.

[outside1234]

You needed to be around in the 1990s to understand this. :)

Its sort of like Google search now where when you search for "ann arbor map" you get a giant beautiful link to another Google property and a few riffraff links to other competitors that basically nobody ever clicks on because it would take effort.

This is exactly where Microsoft was in the 90s / early 2000s with browsers. They had a dominant desktop share and they directly embedded IE and although there were alternatives, clicking takes effort and nobody did that. They just used IE. The EU forced them to provide an explicit, easy option to reduce that advantage.

Given Google's dominant share in search, it would not be surprising to me to see the EU force them to change this for the same competition reasons.

Also, it was a great way for the EU to shake Microsoft down for billions of dollars and ensure there was no one company more powerful than the EU, but I'll leave that to the conspiracy theorists.

[walkon]

I was there in the 90s. Only having access to Windows when the Internet became common, guess how I went about learning there were other browsers out there and downloading Netscape?

How much more difficult would that have been if IE wasn't included by default with Windows?

[laumars]

Not that much harder since software demo disks often came bundled with consumer magazines.

In fact back in the 90s, my Linux box would only receive updates via magazine cover disks.

[walkon]

Are you saying Microsoft should have intentionally excluded a means to browse http content and instead directed customers to be on the lookout for consumer magazines with a demo disk containing a browser? Where and how do they draw the line to being a useful distribution and alienating their users? For example, certain ICMP utilities were included by default with Windows.

[laumars]

> Are you saying Microsoft should have blah blah blah...

No, I'm not saying Microsoft should have done anything specific. My post quite clearly says that a lot of useful software was still easily available to those who's internet access was a premium; and nothing more.

However now I think about it, I'm pretty sure I got my copy of Internet Explorer 4 (the one that integrated IE's Triedent engine into Windows Explorer) from a .Net magazine* cover CD. So it's not like browsers weren't also distributed via the aforementioned method.

(*not to be confused with Microsoft .NET)

> Where and how do they draw the line to being a useful distribution and alienating their users? For example, certain ICMP utilities were included by default with Windows.

Now you're just arguing for the sake of having an argument.

[paulojreis]

Well... you know what a browser is (and you also know that there are alternatives). Most people don't. Most people don't open the browser, they "go to the Internet"; the browser is the "Internet".

If a dominant player bundles their browser (as a component) in their OS, people become less and less aware of the browser as a possible and separate "product", and will of course use the dominant one as default - this is (and effectively was!) bad for competition and evolution(any web developer can tell you the pain this caused and still causes today).

[pinumbernumber]

But the same is true for the calculator app, or the file manager. Granted, the web is used for a lot more than those... but I don't see why the browser is singled out as something needing special legal treatment.

[pixl97]

> but I don't see why the browser is singled out as something needing special legal treatment

Does your calculator interact with anything else but your computer? Same with file manager (SMB excluded)?

Now lets look at the browser, it interacts with different servers, via the HTTP protocol, and the documents they serve via many different technologies such as HTML, Javascript, Java, XML, Flash, along with others. 'Back in the day' Microsoft did a very strong push to tie IE in with Windows, then push developers to use ActiveX on websites so they would only work with Microsoft products. There was no HTML5 multi-platform interoperability, if you wanted to visit a huge number of sites (many government ones too), you used Windows on X86, and you used IE. Even worse, after the early versions of IE, they dug its hooks deep in to the operating system so it became WindowsIE, you didn't have one without the other.

[grobinson]

I don't quite see what interaction over the Internet has to do with the issue. Microsoft Office is regularly bundled with new Windows computers as a trial, or basic license. Could that not be seen as anti competitive?

I could argue that the TCP/IP stack is "bundled" with the operating system, and it's something that's very difficult to change (if not impossible without recompiling the kernel). Network engineers have probably had to put up with different TCP/IP stacks using different congestion control algorithms, impacting fairness of bandwidth usage on their networks. So by the same pretense, shouldn't TCP/IP stacks require the same choice that Microsoft were required to offer with browsers?

[mgkimsal]

There wasn't a whole lot of evidence that MS was trying to explicitly kill for-profit TCP stack vendors.

[grobinson]

Well that's true, my straw man doesn't quite stand up in this case. However it still doesn't explain why Internet Explorer was the target when there is so much other software that was bundled with Windows, which too had for profit competitors? Those people who exclusively used Internet Explorer as "the Internet" would too have used the bundled mail client (I can't remember what it was called back in the day) exclusively too and seen that as "the email"?

[Retra]

As I understand it, Microsoft spent a lot of effort integrating their desktop environment with the browser. Blurring the lines between files on the machine and hyperlinks, making the desktop a webpage, etc. The idea was that "using Windows" and "using IE" were designed to be synonymous -- so much so that the popularity of Windows could be used to monopolize the internet. Nobody would even be able to use another browser without crippling their ability to use Windows, and you couldn't use another OS without crippling your ability to use the internet.

At least, that was the fear.

[takinola]

Under anti-trust law, it is illegal for a company to use their monopoly power in one business as a competitive edge in another separate market. Therefore, the entire argument turns on two things: (1) was Windows a monopoly (2) was IE an integral part of Windows (hence not a product competing in another market).

Since Windows, for all intents and purposes, was a monopoly, a huge part of the discussion was about whether IE was an integral part of the operating system and therefore MS actions were not to be considered as competition in a different market but simply innovation in the existing OS market. Applications like Calculator had been part of operating systems for well over a decade by then and no-one was shipping any OS without one so there really was not a basis for comparison. Browsers, however, were completely new. Netscape, the first widely adopted consumer grade browser, seemed to be doing very well as a stand-alone application. From today's point of view, you could argue that no operating system would ever ship without a browser but that was not clear at the time. A similar idea would be, in say 20 years, BitCoin lockers becoming an integral part of operating systems. Not obvious today, at least not to anyone outside the niche community of enthusiasts.

Clearly, the courts got it wrong, in that browsers are part of the OS today (just as much as the Calculator). However, MS' ability to put Netscape out of business really did slow innovation down overall for a really long time. It took a long time for the market to correct itself and have the better products win. In fact, it took another monopolist (Google) trying to protect its business in another market to come in and accelerate the pace of innovation.

TL,DR: Courts shouldn't be in the position of deciding technology vision. Not because they do not have noble intentions but because they do not have the expertise.

[AnimalMuppet]

But courts should be in the position of deciding whether specific actions constitute abuse of monopoly.

[takinola]

Sure, that is the role of the courts. However, in this case, that distinction rested on the definition of what constituted a certain peice of technology and the ability to predict how that technology was going to evolve. The courts had no way of knowing the answer to this question. To their credit, I honestly doubt the companies themselves even knew the answer at that time.

This situation was very different than when an oil company uses their monopolistic position in refineries to choke competing exploration and retail companies. Or when a manufacturer of telephone equipment uses the profits from its monopoly in that business to drive out competitors in its telephone service business. Clearly, in these scenarios, it was clear (and remains clear) that the monopolists were using resources from one business where they were clearly dominant to out-compete other companies in separate (even if adjacent) businesses.

Technology is a very tricky area for the law largely because it is fast changing. Situations are cropping up far faster than the laws can be modified to address them and so the courts are pretty much forced to sand-off the edges of existing statutes that were designed for other situations and hope for the best.

[AnimalMuppet]

You seem to be saying that the evolution of technology over the next 20 years had something to say about whether Microsoft was abusing a monopoly situation at the time of the trial. I don't think that's a valid way of applying the law.

Furthermore, a big part of Microsoft's motivation for making the browser "part of the OS" was exactly to try to blur that line for the court. I am therefore highly skeptical of using "it's now part of the OS" as a reason that the court got it wrong.

[paulojreis]

Well, I don't know about the basis for a different "legal treatment", but I know that today the browser is the effective plaftorm/container/"VM" for the most popular applications. The browser capabilities and features will actually affect users and web applications - besides the ability to use this as leverage for other products, a single player with browser monopoly will have an unhealthy preponderance in the shaping of the web. I don't believe we can make an intellectually honest comparison with the calculator or the file manager...

[laumars]

Microsoft have come under fire over other software they've bundled free with Windows as well.

IIRC the latest was Windows Defender.

[bunderbunder]

Adding to that, there's an argument to be made that the browser ballot helped make the Web a much richer place.

The reason I say that is that it allowed Chrome to make serious inroads and become a much more dominant browser. Chrome comes from Google, a company whose entire business model revolves around getting people to spend more time on the Web. So they have a vested interest in pushing the Web toward being as rich a content platform as possible so that people spend more time in their Web browser and not in other applications.

So they did that. They made Javascript more performant, they pushed new standards for producing more attractive and responsive pages, etc. And makers of other browsers, who might not have done the same because they're not driven by similar incentives, had to start hurrying to keep up.

[icebraining]

The idea - and I'm just explaining it, not advocating nor criticizing - is that when you have a overwhelming control in one market (in this case, Windows), you can't use that to push your way to the top of another market, since it's stifling the competition and reducing consumer welfare.

[finid]

> when you have a overwhelming control in one market, you can't use that to push your way to the top of another market, ... stifling the competition

Microsoft not only used its OS monopoly to stifle competition, in many cases, it used it to kill many competing products and services. Steve Balmer once boasted that he'll stop at nothing to kill Netscape.

If you were around during the Clinton years when the US filed an anti-trust case against MS, you'd have been surprised at the tactics that Bill Gates and Co used to kill competition.

Those guys were despicable.

[latkin]

This is a pretty great account of the whole msft antitrust debacle. Lots of interesting details and insights into motivations on both sides. Long read, but worth it. http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/microsoft_pr.htm...

[kalleboo]

I thought the original reason wasn't that Microsoft was shipping IE with Windows per say, but that they were telling OEMs that they weren't allowed to pre-install Netscape if they wanted to keep their sweet Windows OEM license deals. Am I thinking of the wrong case?

[mgkimsal]

That was my recollection of the crux of it as well.

Oh, you want to bundle Netscape with your Windows PC? Each copy of Windows will run you $80. If you decide to not bundle Netscape, it'll only be $30.

I'm also reminded of Linux/desktop bundling. IIRC, MS tried (and I think succeeded) in their licensing terms require Windows licensing based on PCs shipped, not Windows PCs shipped, so even selling a Linux-only desktop still required an MS-tax, meaning it was more expensive to sell a Linux desktop than a Windows desktop (at least for some of the big players like Dell, HP, etc).

[chrisan]

That would make more sense if this was the root of the problem. Otherwise Apple and Google would be in the same boat offering users a choice to install a browser other than the default for OSX, iOS, and Android

[kalleboo]

It still wouldn't be the same case as neither Apple nor Google have anything near antitrust levels of monopoly

[digitalzombie]

Microsoft own 90% of the PC market in the 90s.

Netscape was the sizzle and you pay money to get a browser to surf internet.

Microsoft decided to package IE for free on Window.

Internet was wild west and mysterious. There's hardly any books on it and information wasn't traveling as fast for the masses to know much about internet.

But they do know there's this IE thingy that will give them internet.

IE destroyed netscape, very few people had a clue there was an alternative browser...

Hence this was deem as a monopoly.

Hell when I was a kid I didn't really know much other than netscape and all of a sudden IE. It didn't occur to me that there are choices but the fact that IE was a part of window and it just works out of the box. I moved to mozilla when IE was slowing down.

But the point was it was so integrated with window that it was apart of it, it felt natural as if the internet was apart of microsoft.

And in fact microsoft acted as a gate keeper of the internet for years that was their business goal. Their OS control stuff on the PC and that's how they made money. Which is why they lost to Google when they double down on their model. The way they acted and their many moves to monopolize it, one of which was IE.

[rskar]

The simplest explanation: Implementation costs, as in what it takes to design internet based systems in order to connect with and make sales to consumers and businesses.

The grand dream has long been to have a set of standards which web browser designers and network infrastructure designers must design to. In reality, standards development and compliance has a lag time to it that brings frustration to those who need web sites for their business models. So, in all practicality, they will design and test for perhaps one, two, or three platforms - as popularity may guide - and make use of non-standard methods where standards-based methods are lacking.

Add to this what others have observed, that the typical user knows little to nothing about what a web browser is, or even cares to know.

Companies that manage to achieve popularity for their internet technologies - such as a web browser, among other things - tend to have stronger voices and more powerful influences on standards committees. That gives them a competitive edge in that they can push for a standard where their products are already or nearly compliant with, thereby forcing others to expend energy (cash + time) into whatever reverse engineering projects needed to comply. Alternatively, the stronger voices can also induce more heel-dragging.

In the meantime, companies that have the popular technologies - such as Microsoft, especially in the 1990's - can more easily make sales to the businesses requiring web sites, for either internet or intranet needs. And consumers find their internet surfing experience generally satisfying with the home computer as they got it (again, especially in the 1990's, that was MS Windows + Internet Explorer).

Microsoft was uniquely positioned for dominance. They made the most popular desktop OS, and equipped it with a ubiquitous web browser (for both Windows and Mac OS back then). They then also had the server technology, software development tools, and a "portal" to funnel consumers to advertisers and shopping sites. Basically, they were leveraging their software technology and market position to get into the same business that Netscape had just started. They succeeded tremendously, and basically squeezed out much of the competition, including Netscape.

[Cthulhu_]

Because Opera, and before that the company behind Real Player, are anal like that and the EU went and agreed with them for some silly reason. They never did go after Apple, or Google / Android, or whatever for doing the exact same thing (pre-installing a media player / browser). I guess you could argue that Microsoft was singled out because their browser was an inherent component of their OS, but at the same time you could go after Apple and Android as well for their webview that is required to be used in all applications that need one.

[icebraining]

They don't go after Apple, because bundling by itself is not prohibited, only if you have an overwhelming control of the market, which Windows had but iOS doesn't. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if the EU started pressuring Google on the Android front in the near future - they're already talking about splitting up the company.

(Again, not advocating, just explaining)

[icantthinkofone]

The EU has no control over splitting up Google or the ability to make that happen.

As far as Android goes, Google has no monopoly on the phone business.

[cLeEOGPw]

He meant there are talks in google to split the company in order to avoid application of monopoly laws.

[icebraining]

No, I meant what I said. Specifically, I was referring to this[1], where the EP says regulators should consider splitting up search engines from other commercial services.

That doesn't mean I believe they well split them up - nor does the resolution say that, it's just a recommendation - but it does mean they're increasing the pressure on Google, and so potentially on Android as well.

[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/2014...

[icantthinkofone]

That link says nothing about anything you just said and doesn't mention Google directly either other than the general reference of "search engines".

[crdoconnor]

>They never did go after Apple, or Google / Android, or whatever for doing the exact same thing

Duh. Because neither one had a monopoly.

[wahsd]

It's because not everyone ... actually the vast majority of users ... is aware of other browsers and even if they would be, they may have then only known about Firefox even though there are many many more browsers.

Think of it this way, it's akin to a car manufacturer selling cars with labels that state that anything other than XYZ branded gasoline will cause damage and void the warranty. Sure, maybe it won't cause damage and sure it may not stand up in court that it voids the warranty, but most people aren't in the position to know that, nor should they need to be in the position to know.

We ... the community of technology savy ... are very frequently remiss to ignore that not everyone can be, nor should have to be well informed about technology. Think of if Martha Stewart claimed that her recipe will only turn out if you use Greenest Pastures Milk when you are trying to hobble together a cake to impress your family. Are you informed enough about the intricacies of milk that you would know that you can use other milk brands?

Sure, you may scoff and say that you know enough about milk to know that it's not true, but do you know that some brands don't have additives or certain types of fat that may collapse your batter?

[josefresco]

Your car analogy is poor. Better would be to consider a scenario where Ford owned 95% of the car market, and offered for free, Ford branded stereos in each model whereas previously there was no stereo and you had to buy one separate.

Other stereo manufacturers, who sell stereos got mad, and basically convinced the government that Ford has a monopoly and should be forced to offer consumers a choice in stereo.

Microsoft never warned people that using another browser would "cause damage" or void warranty. They simply gave away something for free, that was previously a paid product. Their dominant market position gave them leverage to essentially wipe out the competition. This, depending on your market philosophy was either the right move to protect consumers, or an example of special interests influencing government to effect markets (IMHO it was probably both).

[LLWM]

No, it's not like that. Microsoft didn't tell people installing other browsers would break their computer, people were just not aware of the option.