In 2001, Bill Gates, the chief architectural engineer for software in Microsoft, commented at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, in the US Court of Appeal’s decision to cancel the lower court ruling that the software giant is divided.
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A legendary legal issue waving on the horizon on the continuous teacher Anti -monopoly issue Involving Google and the American government.
A federal judge has spent that the technology giant was working as a monopoly because it strangled the competition illegally in the search engine market. During the next few weeks, the judge hears arguments from the Ministry of Justice and Google to determine the sanctions that are offered to impose a tax on the company.
Since both sides offer arguments about what are the appropriate treatments, another Techan Titan name continues to appear: Microsoft.
But why?
A quarter of a century ago, a federal judge decided a similar case in We are against Microsoftand The federal government accused the world’s leading software company at the time of trying to monopolize the personal computer market.
This case was established for a precedent Current Google Case Legal experts told NPR and helped form the current anti -monopoly law, especially with regard to other technology companies.
“It is the key to all this. Both sides will try to withdraw parts of it to make his case,” said Sam Winstein, a professor of law at Yashiva University in New York.
Here’s a look back on this flood condition and how it can highlight how Google ends.
At a press conference at the US Department of Justice in Washington in April 2000, the Assistant Prosecutor to Combat Monopolist Joel Klein (right) praises the government against the software giant at a time when Attorney General Janet Renault is viewed.
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What happened in the Microsoft case?
The 1998 anti -monopoly issue against Microsoft came by the US Department of Justice, 20 state prosecutors in the states and Colombia province recently after years of investigations conducted by federal agencies.
After decades, Microsoft It is still considered “the most important issue to combat monopoly of digital platforms in the past thirty years,” said Rebecca Hoy Alinsworth, a professor of anti -monopoly law at Vanderbilt University.
The situation focused on whether Microsoft offends its location as a monopoly by filling the Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system. The Ministry of Justice claimed that companies such as Netscape, a competitive web browser maker, were strongly trapped by Microsoft, which is widely considered the dominant technology player at that time.
Microsoft said “Microsoft has made her own browser.” “And they made it difficult for Netscape to be widely distributed.”
A Windows 95 screenshot screenshop was stopped on a laptop captured on June 8, 2000.
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In fact, Microsoft was considered an explicit “bullying” after that, Winstein said. He said he carried out aggressive tactics to ensure that he created exclusive deals with other companies to keep Internet Explorer on certain devices and to keep other browsers from desktop computers.
Winztein noticed that famous, the Ministry of Justice investigation It revealed that an executive director of Microsoft Intel, another technology giant, told his organization that “will cut air supplies in Netscape” and that Microsoft is in “giving up free browsers”, will suffocate Netscape revenue sources. In the court’s certificate, Paul Maritz, former CEO of Microsoft, was accused of making this statement, He denied saying this.
Ultimately, the American boycott judge Thomas Benfield Jackson ordered that Microsoft be divided into two parts – an aggressive penalty that will eventually turn at the appeal in 2001.
“By that time, a new administration entered and the priorities of the Ministry of Justice changed, and they settled the case without disintegration.”
The Ministry of Justice and Microsoft agreed to drop plans to disintegrate the technology giant, and in return, Microsoft was on the establishment of an internal technology committee to combat monopoly and compliance program. The ruling that Microsoft was a monopoly that remained unchanged.
Exhibitions are working on laptops in front of the Google Logo in 2007. It puts a lawsuit against the Ministry of Justice against Google attempt to try the government to protect competition since its pioneering issue against Microsoft more than 20 years ago.
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What is the broader effect of the situation?
Although you avoid disintegration, Microsoft Winstein said that the case established a legal precedent for how to follow the monopolistic technology companies.
The Ministry of Justice designed the search engine complaint against the monopoly against Google, as well as the proposed treatments, on Microsoft issue.
By doing this, “They say mainly whether we can make our condition look like Microsoft, we can also win. I think this works in the stage of responsibility.”
In its original complaint, the government claimed that Google was following the Microsoft Playbook book in its monopolistic practices. Google continues to deny that she is a monopoly and says she intends to stab the American boycott judge Amit Mih resolution On the responsibility.
In the early days of the certificate in the trial of treatment that was heard in the federal court in the capital, Microsoft It comes frequently. In the court files, the government refers to Microsoft As a road map of how to impose penalties against Google.
These penalties include a suggestion of its Chrome web browser, so that Google stops third -party payments for phone makers such as Apple, which guarantees their default mode to search and perhaps sell Google Android smartphones.
Chrome is the world’s leading web browser and Android is used by smartphone users more than any other operating system.
Chrome comes with a Google search engine collection as a default setting, and Android is assembled with Google applications, including Chrome.
Google says in the court’s deposits that the government’s penalty proposals go beyond the behavior that Judge Mihata found monopoly and unlike the law that she set Microsoft issue.
But there are different thinking schools about the impact of Microsoft’s sanctions already.
Winstein said the final settlement between the Ministry of Justice and Microsoft was “effective in opening the door to new competitors such as Apple and Google.” He said that without Microsoft, some large and successful companies such as Apple or Google have never argued. He said that the other opinion is that Microsoft came out of light.
Knowing all this date still makes it difficult to predict what may happen in Google.
“It is difficult to know what will happen here,” Winstein said.