Word: browsers
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...doesn't ban monopolies, even those as potent as Windows. But Microsoft crossed the line, Judge Jackson held, when it used Windows in a "predatory" way to protect its monopoly and build new ones. A key Microsoft tactic: adding features to Windows. Microsoft originally developed its Explorer Web browser as a separate consumer item, but then it decided to include--or bundle--the browser in Windows in 1995. The upshot was that Windows users got a free browser when they bought their PC's--making it awfully hard for Netscape to persuade them to buy its competing program...
Microsoft says it bundles browsers and other applications to make Windows better. And it insists it must have the right to continue to innovate by adding any "functionalities" it wants. But Judge Jackson held that Microsoft was simply using this innovation argument--a "technological artifice"--in order to extend the Windows monopoly into an Internet browser monopoly. And that, he ruled, was illegal...
...promoted and distributed Explorer--and not Netscape's Navigator--their sites would be listed on the Windows desktop. That would give them free access to millions of Windows users, an invaluable source of traffic for a fledgling site. All this leveraging proved highly effective: Netscape's share of the browser market plunged from 80% in 1996 to 30% today...
...after settlement talks between Justice and Microsoft fell apart--he reiterated his interest in bundling speech-recognition software into a future version of Windows. That could prove just as disastrous for IBM and Dragon Systems' competing voice-recognition software as the decision to bundle the Explorer Web browser was for Netscape. And it would give the Justice Department yet another argument for dismantling the Windows monopoly...
Lessig supported the government's contention that regulation was necessary because "tying" or bundling the Windows operating system with Internet Explorer restricted the freedom of the user to choose his or her own browser...