It's funny, because the anti-trust lawsuit revolved entirely around the browser wars and "bundling". However, that law is rather vague bordering on poorly written (many instances of "bundling" are often a benefit to the customer) and was likely misinterpreted besides. Moreover, Microsoft won the browser war as much on releasing an outright better browser in a key time frame when Netscape was having extreme development trouble. Even without the bundling Netscape was at a huge disadvantage.
More so, the truly anti-competitive behavior of Microsoft (where they effectively bribed OEMs to prevent them using other OSes) didn't receive nearly as much attention.
There was an antitrust lawsuit from Be about the OEM shit, but it was settled out of court for only $23 million without MS admitting any wrongdoing http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/84708/Microsoft_Be_re... likely because Be was near dead by that point.
I remember thinking that was strange. How do you settle an antitrust lawsuit out of court? Ask every consumer ever to agree that 10c is fair for having been prevented from having the option of saying "No OS or GPL OS please, I'll sort it out myself when I get home"? I don't recall getting one red cent, even though I was sold hardware through several vendors who had been bribed to not offer me options. While I'm sure many consumers would still have said "No, I need things installed" I can also see many saying "Nah, I'm not forking up for an OS, I'll run GPL" or "Nah, I'll... No. (pirated CD at the ready back home)".
By the same token, half the crap on a fresh install nowadays doesn't really benefit either although it's hard to say which direction the money is flowing, I suppose if they're charging me less for installing McAffee/ton of ISPs/etc whatever, I'll opt in and remove them. But I still don't have the option or anything..
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It's funny, because the anti-trust lawsuit revolved entirely around the browser wars and "bundling". However, that law is rather vague bordering on poorly written (many instances of "bundling" are often a benefit to the customer) and was likely misinterpreted besides. Moreover, Microsoft won the browser war as much on releasing an outright better browser in a key time frame when Netscape was having extreme development trouble. Even without the bundling Netscape was at a huge disadvantage.
More so, the truly anti-competitive behavior of Microsoft (where they effectively bribed OEMs to prevent them using other OSes) didn't receive nearly as much attention.
There was an antitrust lawsuit from Be about the OEM shit, but it was settled out of court for only $23 million without MS admitting any wrongdoing http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/84708/Microsoft_Be_re... likely because Be was near dead by that point.
I remember thinking that was strange. How do you settle an antitrust lawsuit out of court? Ask every consumer ever to agree that 10c is fair for having been prevented from having the option of saying "No OS or GPL OS please, I'll sort it out myself when I get home"? I don't recall getting one red cent, even though I was sold hardware through several vendors who had been bribed to not offer me options. While I'm sure many consumers would still have said "No, I need things installed" I can also see many saying "Nah, I'm not forking up for an OS, I'll run GPL" or "Nah, I'll... No. (pirated CD at the ready back home)".
By the same token, half the crap on a fresh install nowadays doesn't really benefit either although it's hard to say which direction the money is flowing, I suppose if they're charging me less for installing McAffee/ton of ISPs/etc whatever, I'll opt in and remove them. But I still don't have the option or anything..