>Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle.

Nope. That's what some people complained about, but it wasn't their legal issue (which is why today every OS vendor still does it).

The actual complaint, which is pasted below, shows it in much greater nuance, as it wasn't that they "required OEMs to buy the bundle" (in fact, there wasn't any buying, IE was free part of Windows).

> > Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle.

> Nope.

Yes, it was.

> That's what some people complained about, but it wasn't their legal issue (which is why today every OS vendor still does it).

No, every OS vendor doesn't do illegal tying of a browser to the OS, which involves both the fact of a preexisting monopoly OS to which the tying occurs (that's essential to the illegality, since its an illegal method of leveraging one monopoly to another market), and the kind of business methods used to enforce the tying.

No, Microsoft's primary offense was making non-Microsoft tools awkward. Windows without IE was awkward. Windows wasn't done until it gave odd error messages on DR DOS. Borland always seemed to have incomplete documentation, late. Etc.

Google works poorly enough on non-Chrome browsers that it's the same thing.

You are welcome to read the complaint. I've pulled out some choice paragraphs:

5. To protect its valuable Windows monopoly against such potential competitive threats, and to extend its operating system monopoly into other software markets, Microsoft has engaged in a series of anticompetitive activities. Microsoft's conduct includes agreements tying other Microsoft software products to Microsoft's Windows operating system; exclusionary agreements precluding companies from distributing, promoting, buying, or using products of Microsoft's software competitors or potential competitors; and exclusionary agreements restricting the right of companies to provide services or resources to Microsoft's software competitors or potential competitors.

17. But Mr. Gates did not stop at free distribution. Rather, Microsoft purposefully set out to do whatever it took to make sure significant market participants distributed and used Internet Explorer instead of Netscape's browser -- including paying some customers to take IE and using its unique control over Windows to induce others to do so. For example, in seeking the support of Intuit, a significant application software developer, Mr. Gates was blunt, as he reported in a July 1996 internal e-mail:

18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those OEMs shipped with Windows.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp

Gosh, these sound just like Android, now that you're quoting it. My Android phone came with Chrome, gmail, Google Maps, uploads my photos to Google, and requires a Google account.

But I think that's beside the point. Microsoft did a lot of anti-competitive things in a lot of markets. Limiting scope to one particular litigation isn't really helpful here. The phrasing, "THE compliant," makes it sound like there wasn't a mountain of complaints. There was.

> Gosh, these sound just like Android, now that you're quoting it.

Android is getting in trouble for it in the EU!

>But I think that's beside the point. Microsoft did a lot of anti-competitive things in a lot of markets. Limiting scope to one particular litigation isn't really helpful here. The phrasing, "THE compliant," makes it sound like there wasn't a mountain of complaints. There was.

This thread was about their legal issues with IE. People complain about a lot of things, but that doesn't make them illegal.

> This thread was about their legal issues with IE.

Perhaps. I view threads more like human conversations.

> People complain about a lot of things, but that doesn't make them illegal.

Microsoft did a lot of illegal things in the nineties, which many people complained about. Some were litigated, most were not. Lack of litigation doesn't make it legal.

Google seems to be doing a few illegal things right now, although not nearly as many as nineties-era Microsoft.

Microsoft's crime was doing it in the 90s. What Apple has done with iOS and OSX takes Microsoft's bundling, third-party lockout and lack of consumer choice to an exponential level, and it's celebrated as a feature now. iOS literally disallows any other browser technology from running, requiring them all to use less-featured versions of the first party tool. Microsoft must be jealous seeing them get away with that.

Microsoft's crime was doing this in the 90s when they had nearly complete control of the desktop market and there were few alternatives for getting on the internet. This was a monopoly.

Apple has about half the mobile market share in the US, and about a quarter globally. There are plenty of alternative ways to get on the internet. This is not a monopoly.

You can't just look at bundling the browser with the OS in isolation. The circumstances are significantly different.

And that's why I regard anti-trust laws as inconsistently applied cudgels and not as legal gospel. If tying (assuming there's a consistent definition of the word) is such a bad idea to begin with why does it matter whether it's done by a company at 90% or 10% of market? Equality under the law should be the measure.

> If tying (assuming there's a consistent definition the word) is such a bad idea to begin with why does it matter whether it's done by a company at 90% or 10% of market? Equality under the law should be the measure.

There is nothing inherently wrong with tying, which you might also call "bundling." Quoting from the FTC's website:

Offering products together as part of a package can benefit consumers who like the convenience of buying several items at the same time. Offering products together can also reduce the manufacturer's costs for packaging, shipping, and promoting the products. Of course, some consumers might prefer to buy products separately, and when they are offered only as part of a package, it can be more difficult for consumers to buy only what they want.

For competitive purposes, a monopolist may use forced buying, or "tie-in" sales, to gain sales in other markets where it is not dominant and to make it more difficult for rivals in those markets to obtain sales. This may limit consumer choice for buyers wanting to purchase one ("tying") product by forcing them to also buy a second ("tied") product as well. Typically, the "tied" product may be a less desirable one that the buyer might not purchase unless required to do so, or may prefer to get from a different seller. If the seller offering the tied products has sufficient market power in the "tying" product, these arrangements can violate the antitrust laws.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Like how Apple bundled iTunes and forced streaming competitors onto uneven playing fields with the 30% tax to dominate online music sales, bundled the App Store and banned competing stores to ensure no competition, bundled Safari and banned competing tech, bundled Podcasts to help outcompete others in an area they want more growth, etc

It's only anti-trust when companies people don't like do it.

The difference is that Apple is selling hardware with software as a single product and has done so consistently, while Microsoft attempted to exclude a new competitor by colluding with OEMs and imposing exclusionary agreements on partners as a condition of buying Windows, a product that had a dominant share in its market. If Microsoft had always included Internet Explorer in Windows and hadn't tried to later tie them together in order to crush Netscape then the outcome may have been different. Instead, Microsoft basically said "distribute our new product or we won't let you distribute Windows" and you just can't do that when Windows is dominant.

The Justice Department's complaint is an eye-opening view into what Microsoft's misconduct was: https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp

Not trying to defend Microsoft’s behavior here by any means but the justice department clearly lost the case. The original favorable ruling splitting up Microsoft was conclusively rejected by the court of appeals on almost all points. The general consensus of the academic commentary on the case I have seen( not universal by any means) is that asserting that Windows is itself a monopoly is problematic; mainly due to the lack of evidence that demand for windows is not influenced by pricing.