FREE ESSAY ON THE ANTI-TRUST CASE AGAINST MICROSOFT

THE ANTI-TRUST CASE AGAINST MICROSOFT

The Anti-Trust Case Against Microsoft
By Corporate Watch writing this article Microsoft: One World Operating System
(www.corpwatch.org/trac/feature/microsoft).
A battle is raging in the United States Courts with the Microsoft Corporation. The
federal government maintains that Microsoft's monopolistic practices are harmful to
United States citizens creating higher prices and potentially downgrading software
quality and should be stopped while Microsoft and its supporters claim that they are not
breaking any laws and are just doing good business. Microsoft's antitrust problems began
for them in the early 1990's. When the Federal Trad The Anti-Trust Case Against
Microsoft
A battle is raging in the United States Courts with the Microsoft Corporation. The
federal government maintains that Microsoft's monopolistic practices are harmful to
United States citizens creating higher prices and potentially downgrading software
quality and should be stopped while Microsoft and its supporters claim that they are not
breaking any laws and are just doing good business. Microsoft's antitrust problems began
for them in the early 1990's. When the Federal Trade Commission began investigating them
for possible violations of the Antitrust Laws. Which are designed to stop the formation
of monopolies. The investigation continued on without resolve, until Novell a competitor
of Microsoft's filed a complaint. Doing this stalled the investigations even more until
finally the case was handed over to the Department of Justice. 
The Department of Justice moved quickly the case (they thought) finally ended on July 15,
1994, with Microsoft signing a consent settlement. The settlement focused on Microsoft's
selling practices with computer manufacturers. Up until then Microsoft would sell MS-DOS
and Microsoft's other operating systems to (OEM's) at a 60% discount if that OEM agreed
to pay a royalty to Microsoft for every single computer that they sold. Regardless if it
had a Microsoft operating system installed on it or not. After the settlement, Microsoft
would be forced to sell their operating systems according to the number of computers
shipped with a Microsoft operating system installed, and not for computers that ran other
operating systems. Another practice that the Justice Department accused Microsoft of was
that Microsoft would specify a minimum number of operating systems that the retailer had
to buy. Thus eliminating any chance for another operating system vendor to get their
system installed until the retailer had installed all of the Microsoft operating systems.
In addition to specifying a minimum number of operating systems that a vendor had to buy,
Microsoft also would sign contracts with the vendors for long periods of time such as two
or three years.