It didn't work out for Microsoft, namely because lawsuits and coverage brought attention to the issue of market dominance. That's what people on this HN article are proposing we do today. And it's about time, given that our current economy is vastly different from the one a century ago when anti-trust laws started springing up.

You haven't addressed the core of my previous comment though, regarding how big tech companies today are obscuring their branding to mislead (in my opinion) users to be completely unaware they are even using a (insert big tech company name here) product. The part of my comment you quoted wasn't me trying to talk about the rise and fall of Internet Explorer's monopoly. Rather, it was me pointing out what I believe to be a nasty dark pattern of tech today, where tech companies are building black-box products.

Yeah, how did it work out that the EU forced Microsoft to unbundle its browser?

It's not "unbundling" the browser that caused Microsoft to lose its dominance in the technology industry. None of the big four major technology companies today - Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon -depend on their browser being dominant. Microsoft failed to take advantage of the next major technology waves - mobile, search, social, and ecommerce.

Unbundling the browser didn't help the other browser manufacturers.