Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Windows is the operating system--the brain and central nervous system--of 90% of the world's PCs. That makes Windows not just a monopoly, but a highly strategic weapon as well. It gives Microsoft an unequaled platform from which to launch new products, and it makes it easy for Gates to intimidate other tech companies into doing things Microsoft's way. Software writers, chipmakers and dotcom companies all have a lot to lose if they don't stay on Microsoft's good side...
Gates' public relations offensive comes just as the gavel is about to crash down. Having found Microsoft guilty, Judge Jackson says he will move quickly--probably in the next three months--to impose remedies to rein it in. Some hawks in the Justice Department are expected to demand a "structural" remedy--breaking the company up into smaller and less dangerous pieces. Microsoft is likely to ask for "conduct" remedies--limits on its future behavior...
...legal wrangling, the battle over remedies boils down to this: What to do about Windows? The heart of the government's case was that Microsoft used its Windows monopoly as a club to bully its way into other markets, such as Internet browsers. Judge Jackson will be looking for a way to stop Gates from unfairly using Windows for leverage in the future. Depending on how bold he decides to be, he could let Microsoft keep its monopoly but require it to play more fairly. He could force it to share Windows with its competitors. Or he could tear...
...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...