What the 1990s Microsoft Case Tells Us About Regulating Big Tech
Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple are facing increasing government scrutiny over competitive practices. They’ll fight back, but there is precedent to take action.
In 1998, the U.S. Justice Department and attorneys general from 21 states brought an antitrust monopolization lawsuit against Microsoft. At that time, Microsoft controlled how most consumers and businesses worked on their desktop computers. Its Windows operating system provided the connection between all sorts of software and the central processing units of our PCs, and its Office software was critical for the majority of office workers.
The core of the complaint against Microsoft was that it used practices that deliberately strangled an upstart competitor called Netscape, then in its infancy. Netscape’s new “browser” software allowed desktop PC users to access goods, services, and information through the web. In 1995, Bill Gates saw that Netscape posed a challenge to the Windows operating system and predicted an “internet tidal wave” of competition that threatened to sideline Microsoft’s products. In response, Microsoft launched its Internet Explorer browser, triggering what became known as the browser wars and eventually attracting the…
