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“The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Windows operating s

“The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Windows operating system. Bundling them is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera), since it typically took a while to download or purchase such software at a store.” That’s straight from the wiki. It was mainly about bundling. Yes market dominance was a factor but Google has dominance in the search market and they were never forced to unbundle any of their services in the US. They also “bundle” search with Chrome so how is that any different?

matthewmacleod 7y ago
No – the issue is not bundling. Bundling in general is not a problem. Companies bundle things all the time, and it should be immediately obvious that this isn't a problem. But bundling can become a problem when the company doing the bundling has an outsized effect on the market generally. This means that when a company (e.g. Microsoft) has total market dominance in a category, then bundling software for which there is already a third-party market, using privileged access to your own APIs—particularly when you talk about wanting to "extinguish" and "smother" rivals–it can become a problem where it otherwise wouldn't be. Note that Google has had several antitrust investigations launched against it, including the ongoing US one.