Free seemed to work fine for Chrome and Firefox. The real key here is that corporations stopped paying for Netscspe, which was their main revenue stream. Microsoft definitely got a big advantage from bundling the browser, but how can it make sense in an Internet era for an OS to ship without a browser? How could it possibly benefit consumers if they were forced to download a browser separately? Nobody is screaming antitrust when Apple bundles Safari.

No, the real key here is that IE was included with copies of Windows. You absolutely cannot account for the rise of IE without this. It is pure revisionism to try.

Apple's position with respect to Safari is nothing like Microsoft's position at that time. For starters, Apple doesn't even approach a monopoly in the desktop PC market. And Chrome and Firefox got big in a different era, years after Netscape was buried.

You seem greatly concerned to say that Netscape was "whining" and "screaming" and that it wouldn't "make sense" for Microsoft to have done otherwise. I am only concerned with the accuracy of the account of how IE got popular. If that impedes your Netscape bashing, that is only incidental to me and I don't even understand why you would still have any kind of interest in the subject given how long Netscape has been buried.

>Free seemed to work fine for Chrome and Firefox.

Downloading Netscape back in the day wasn't the same as downloading Chrome or Firefox today. We're talking about 1997-8, when most people had 56k modems at best.

That's entirely because Apple doesn't have a monopoly.

You really think that Microsoft should be prevented from bundling a browser with windows? And that consumers would benefit from this?

You may misunderstand the case that you're referring to. They bundled for free that which cost money otherwise, as well as using undocumented APIs. When they were found to be a monopoly, their actions, which would in many other cases be perfectly legal, were a problem.