Ah three decades ago, a year before Internet Explorer was released[0], and 7 months after Netscape was released[1], easy to correct in hindsight.

Two decades ago IE6 was already 3yo, Safari 1 was 1yo, and it would take 4 years for Chrome to drop[2].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

What a useless comment.

When you use decades, it is implied that the precision is rough, interpreting it as exactly 30 years ago is just bad faith.

OP is correct - in the timespan between 2 and 3 decades ago, MS / IE implemented its full range of anti-competitive practices and at least partially through them became even more dominant than Chrome is today.

I think the circumstances were quite different. MS was an entrenched player when they created IE/started monopolizing. Google was not an entrenched player. They rose to monopoly power.

Do we really still think operating systems shouldn't ship with browsers??

I thought that one had been retroactively deemed a pretty silly decision

Well I certainly don't, but clearly MS, Google and others think the exact opposite.

No points for guessing why as it's damn obvious.

There are lots of MSFTers who now work for Google. They just relocated from the Microsoft office in Palo Alto to the Google one down the road.

Same people = same mistakes.