Let's see some more cola hypocrisy 1833

Erik Funkenbusch If you look at the way the case went down, the DOJ accused MS of a) anticompebreastive exclusive dealing that ruined Netscape's market for browsers due to the exclusive dealing contracts they signed with OEMs, b) leveraging their monopoly in Windows desktop OS to gain a monopoly in browsers, c) illegal tying of a product (IE) to a monopoly product, and illegally maintaining their desktop monopoly by doing a number of things that raised the barriers to any entry by a competing product to their monopoly product, Windows. These latter things were the insisting that OEMs not modify the standard Windows desktop, co-marketing agreements and discounts for exclusive dealing and including IE specific subroutines in one of the system DLLs.

Judge Jackson tossed the exclusive dealing charge, since it was shown that Netscape had other routes to market and the law is pretty specific on what consbreastutes anticompebreastive exclusive dealing and Microsoft had not crossed the line. The appeals court tossed Jackson's ruling that MS had illegally leveraged IE with Windows, pointing out that there was no proof that there even was a market for browsers. IE was free and, for all practical matters, so was Navigator, so there was no market even shown to exist. The appeals court tossed out the illegal tying charge as well, saying that Per se tying wasn't illegal if it improved the product, which is what it had said before. The DOJ decided that there was no sense pursuing the tying charge since there was no opportunity to even show that a separate market existed let alone the opportunity to tie a product in that market to a monopoly product, particularly one that was being given away. The whole thing seemed kind of stupid after the appeals court got done with it, and the states agreed, even Mbuttachusetts.

The only thing left was the monopoly maintenance collection and that was deemed by the appeals court and Jackson as well to have had no effect on actually maintaining MS Windows monopoly, and only served to maintain the monopoly if and when a compebreastor ever showed up in the future. Since none had yet shown, it was deemed non-causal and only needed injunctive relief, i.e. "Quit doing that!" and didn't warrant a fine or any remedial action, particularly the dismantling of the monopoly condition.

MS was basically found to be violating laws that it didn't have any need to violate in order to maintain its business lead. That was the sad part and I cannot imagine that the DOJ and states would have wasted the country's time and money if the facts had been known at the outset that were determined at the end.