Microsoft is a company that has contributed to a lot of our modern-day software development efforts and productivities. We’ve grown so accustomed to using Microsoft products that we don’t even think about it on an everyday basis. Their products seem to have blended in exceptionally well into our daily lives to the extent that they have primarily become part of our muscle memory. However, it is essential to point out that Microsoft’s early growth and subsequent successes are not without controversies and stumble blocks. It has been the target of numerous antitrust lawsuits from governments of multiple countries across many continents. The two most prominent ones came from the U.S and the European Union regulators.

The first antitrust lawsuit filed against Microsoft was the infamous court case of the United States v. Microsoft Corporation in 1998. In that case, the U.S Department of Justice argued that Microsoft used its overwhelming financial superiority and its market dominance to develop a competing web browsing product to try to unfairly coerce and force its fellow competitor Netscape out of business. Initially, the district judge presiding on that case ruled in favor of the Justice Department against Microsoft and ordered Microsoft to spin off its web browsing software business into a separate entity to prevent unfair competition. However, Microsoft later appealed this original ruling to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals and had the verdict overturned in their favor. The U.S Department of Justice later reached a settlement agreement with Microsoft on November 2nd, 2001. In that settlement, the Justice Department took back the requirement for Microsoft to spin off its web browsing software business. However, in exchange, Microsoft was obligated to share and make transparent its application programming interfaces or APIs for short to the third-party software developers to aid in their product’s software development efforts (U.S. v. Microsoft Corporation).

The second antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft was the case that the European Commission filed in 2004. In that case, the European Commission accused Microsoft of its unfair loyalty licensing practice of their software. It argued that Microsoft has asked for loyalty fees from Sun Microsystems for every product they have built regardless of whether or not it has used Microsoft’s operating systems. After a couple of months of heated deliberation, the European Commission eventually reached an unfavorable ruling against Microsoft for its manipulative licensing practice. Following this verdict, Microsoft released a press release stating that they will be complying with this ruling and have since updated their service term to include licensing flexibility procedures verbiage (Microsoft Implementation of European Commission Decision).

At first glance, it may seem that Microsoft has only made a minimal sacrifice and paid a small price in these two antitrust court cases. However, it is also important to note that these two antitrust court cases were monumental in shaping our modern-day anti-competitive behaviors from these big technology companies. And as more big tech companies face antitrust scrutiny from the governing authorities, it will make these companies think twice before making any other anti-competitive moves. After all, there will be no way to know if they are on the next set of targets on the regulator’s radar.

Works Cited

 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. U.S. v. Microsoft Corporation. 18 May 1998, http://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/final-judgment-133.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. U.S. v. Microsoft Corporation [Browser and Middleware]. 12 Nov. 2002. Final Judgments + Proposed Final Judgments, http://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/final-judgment-133.

Microsoft Corporation. “Microsoft Implementation of European Commission Decision.” Microsoft Implementation of European Commission Decision, Microsoft Corporation, 22 Dec. 2004, web.archive.org/web/20060618113944/www.microsoft.com/mscorp/legal/eudecision/.