Word: browsers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Early handicapping from antitrust experts gives Klein high odds in the first part of his case--proving Windows is a monopoly, duh--but rates his chance of overall victory as fifty-fifty at best. "Justice will have to show Microsoft has achieved a dangerous amount of control of the browser market," notes George Mason law professor William Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission antitrust enforcer. "That's a fairly demanding test...
...remedies are raising eyebrows even higher. Klein, effectively, wants Microsoft either to ship Windows without Explorer or to bundle Navigator as well; allow PC makers to modify their desktops at will and remove Explorer if they so desire; and let online services that have Windows deals promote the Netscape browser anyway. Microsoft responds that stripping Explorer from Windows 98 would mean rewriting significant parts of an operating system that contains 18.2 million lines of code, thus greatly hampering its release--a dubious definition of consumer protection...
...opposed to merely promoting one company's fortunes at another's expense. Asked whether the PC vendor Packard Bell would want to buy Windows at a discount if it didn't include Explorer, a spokeswoman was skeptical. "Would customers want to pay less for a computer without an integrated browser," she mused, "or do they prefer to have an integrated, simple way to surf the Internet?" Microsoft dependents always speak carefully in public, but her implication is clear: her customers would probably want the browser anyway...
...world now knows, that's precisely what happened. Once the toast of Wall Street, Netscape appeared to be toast. Its historic browser--the software that took the cold gray wonkish world of the Internet and made it multimedia, rendering the Net usable by millions--had at its peak accounted for 85% of the market. Now it has, at best, a 55%-to-60% share, and that's slipping fast. Its stock, which once soared above $85 a share (adjusted for a 2-for-1 stock split), lost nearly half its value during a three-month period and hit bottom...
Since then, the company has made a number of moves to keep itself in the game, including a deal with search-engine firm Excite that will bring in $70 million over the next two years. But it's also been reduced to giving away its browser code for free in a last-ditch effort to enlist every anti-Microsoft hacker on the planet to do battle with Gates...