Do you really believe the fines Microsoft was ordered to pay had any effect on the direction of the company? It was on a level of mosquito bite for them. What really forced them to change in last few years is the changing landscape of the whole IT ecosystem. Their market shares dropping, because there are viable alternatives, new kinds and classes of products, the whole opensource movement etc etc. So yes, the invisible hand of market, rather then some silly fines by government.
the IE monopoly did stifle web development for yonks! If they weren't forced to drop IE from being pre-installed, i'd say web development would've still be lagging behind today.
No irony here. All that yelling and fines had zero result in changing Microsoft's behavior. They just paid up.
You know what worked? Some good, old fashioned competition. And that raised up naturally, through free market.
You're joking right? It didn't happen in a vacuum, the whole of society is not free. First off, in this case, didn't Microsoft help support apple through it's bad years specifically so they could point to them and try to avoid antitrust litigation?
Secondly, these competitors could only exist due to government internvention. What do you do when the government no longer "meddles" and the big guys start sending in Pinkertons?
No "invisible hand" there, more like someone yelling loudly at them.