Sorry, but that's simply wrong, both from a legal and typographical perspective. Arial wasn't made by or for Microsoft, but by Monotype. I'd assume that licensi

Sorry, but that's simply wrong, both from a legal and typographical perspective. Arial wasn't made by or for Microsoft, but by Monotype. I'd assume that licensing it was cheaper than Helvetica, or that you'd get a better deal if you buy everything at one foundry. And whether it's a straight clone can be argued, too. Basically it's to Monotype Grotesque like Helvetica is to Akzidenz Grotesk. It's a bit too close to comfort for some designers, but there are lots of fonts in that design space that aren't that different (one of the problem with grotesques). The shapes of the glyphs don't match, but the general footprint is the same so that you easily substitute Arial for Helvetica and won't change the flow of the text. By the way, this is basically the raison d'être for Liberation Sans, which shares the same metrics. Also, if it were a straight carbon copy, designers wouldn't complain about the ugly looks of Arial as compared to Helvetica. Which I never quite got myself, but then again, I'm not Helvetica's biggest fan.