Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
kleinbl00 · 3127 days ago · link · · parent · post: Did the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit of 2000 accomplish anything?
Not sure how old you are, but 'round 2000 not only was Microsoft ascendant but everybody hated them for it. We're talking Clippie-era Microsoft, when pretty much every problem your computer had was related to ActiveX, Word and Excel macros would suddenly stop working because Microsoft and there was fuckall else you could run. Linux? Don't make me laugh. Apple? ...yeah, you're going to use that for business. At the time it still ran OS9, the least-loved mongrel operating system to ever grace a RISC processor. Microsoft was the Ma Bell of 2000 - a big, heinous behemoth that made money not through innovation but through stifling competition. Was the lawsuit necessary? Hard to say. Was it inevitable? Absolutely.