Yes, really. By using their profits from other areas to drive Netscape out of business, consumers were harmed. This was shown in trial and Microsoft found to have violated antitrust laws.
> The horrible, dirty deed Microsoft did was write a better browser.
No, the dirty deed was using their monopolist power to undercut another browser by bundling their offering with the OS.
Please, Walter, your takes are getting a tad way overboard with the anti-regulation stuff, you are stopping to think rationally to become an ideologue. You are smarter than that, at least by your technical achievements you should be.
I competed against Microsoft in the 1980s in the compiler business. Microsoft failed at defeating my tiny (in comparison) company (Zortech). Zortech did quite well against Microsoft C, despite everyone telling me that the next Microsoft release would put Zortech out of business.
Microsoft is one tough competitor. But I knew how to compete with them. I never had much sympathy for Netfix with their crummy (in comparison) browser.
Microsoft could have made their compiler free, and it wouldn't have made the difference. Lots of companies successfully competed with the free utilities Microsoft bundled with their operating system. They did it the old fashioned way - by making a better product, not a worse product.
BTW, did you know that the IBM PC came with a free BASIC compiler? That didn't even slow down competing languages.
And the Gnu stuff. All free. Doesn't that undermine competition? Isn't that so unfair? Why doesn't the DoJ go after Gnu for unfair trade?
Right, because post these events software didn't devolve to 'free software' that only costs 'all your privacy and personal information' as that is the only funding method able to compete with 'free'.
