Re:Deal forcing Microsoft to offer browser choices ends
by nightski on Thursday December 18, 2014 @04:20PM
(#8769682)
It is amusing however how it is a practice now that all major technology companies partake in. For example Google & Apple constantly take ideas from a 3rd party apps and integrate them for free into Android/iOS.
Re:Deal forcing Microsoft to offer browser choices ends
by dragonwriter on Thursday December 18, 2014 @06:00PM
(#8770177)
The legal issue wasn't "taking ideas from 3rd party apps and integrating them for free into" Windows.
It was taking anticompetitive steps to defend an existing monopoly, and to leverage an existing monopoly to monopolize another market.
Its like complaining that one person gets arrested for shooting a gun when another doesn't, not noting that what the first person was actually arrested for was murder by way of a gun, and what the second person was doing was shooting targets on a shooting range.
Dr-DOS and the Berkley screen saver stuff are two other situations that spring to mind, both of which resulted in legal cases, but the size/scope of MS by the time the Netscape thing came around was probably the tipping point (considering their previous behavior already demonstrated a pattern which showed no signs of stopping).