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Microsoft was condemned, but then the sentence wasn’t applied. Microsoft kept IE, and a few years later only got slapped by the EU commission.



As a result, Microsoft had to enter into a consent decree, allow additional non-Microsoft software on PCs, and share a variety of interop protocols.

That's far from nothing, and the web would have been substantially worse without it.

Imagine if IE was the only Windows browser, MS JScript had dominated over JavaScript, IE-only AJAX was the only option, etc.

Measure not against perfection, but against the status quo.

(I'd also argue the entire experience fundamentally changed MS into the company it is today, where interoperability and "growing the pie" again seem important, vs the Borg-like domination trajectory its leadership was then on)




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