Ken made the point that Google and Apple behave the same way as Microsoft in the markets where they have monopoly-like dominance, and I agreed with him. In that instance, I am not talking about browsers. I am talking about the markets in which Google and Apple have monopoly-like power, and the ways they abuse that power. Browsers are a small part of that picture (though, it is telling that all three build browsers, despite their being numerous good browser options on the web...the browser clearly holds a power position on devices, and OS vendors are guarding that position jealously).

Anyway, I think what the justice department went after Microsoft for was a minor part of the wrongs Microsoft committed. Bundling the browser, and effectively prohibiting computer vendors from bundling Netscape, was a nasty trick and it killed Netscape (just as Microsoft killed Lotus, WordPerfect, and numerous others, often through backroom deals to separate those companies from their customer acquisition channels). But, my concerns are less about what happened to Netscape than about what happens to consumers and the market, when consumer choice isn't what decides the outcome.

IE was a proprietary overlay on the web. It was not an HTML browser, it was a Microsoft delivery platform. Having a stranglehold on the browser locked every competing OS out of the web for a decade. I switched to Linux on my desktop in 1995. But, I had to keep a Windows installation around on every desktop I ever owned in order to be able to access bank and government web sites, so I could use IE to access it. That's why IE was destructive, and that's abuse of monopoly power.

And, that's why Microsoft created IE: To embrace and extend the web, to use their existing monopoly in several enterprise markets to subtly take over the new market of the web and destroy the openness that allowed competitors to thrive. And, it succeeded for a long time. For years, we were trapped in this horrible Microsoft-owned world, where the dominant browser was incompatible with every other browser and with the standards and in ways that were intimately tied to the Windows operating system.

So, the courts didn't tackle the most damaging issues, unfortunately, and it took several years for the web to recover from the damage Microsoft caused.