United States vs Microsoft Corporation, for Committing Monopolization
Written By: Blank
March/24/2014
Blank Lee

The federal case United States vs Microsoft Corporation (2001) was an anti-trust case tried in the U.S. District Court in which the U.S. government filed suit against Microsoft on May, 18, 1998 because they were concerned that the company was using the power of it enormous market share in the PC operating system market to exert undue influence on the market prices and competition. The government also alleged that Microsoft had engaged in anticompetitive conduct in violation of § 1 and § 2 of the Sherman Act. Although the investigation really began in 1993 when Microsoft’s marketing tactics had sparked the Department of Justice’s interest in the business dealings of the company in order to conclude whether or not the company was partaking in monopolistic practices. This Department of Justice investigation was directly subsequent to two deadlocked probes by the Federal Trade Commission that were initiated in 1990 ("Wired.com”). During the 1993 investigation the Department of Justice found that indeed Microsoft was abusing the monopoly power it possessed over the PC operating systems markets. Monopoly Powers are generally defined as the absence or ineffectiveness of competitive constraints on price, output, product decisions and quality. The Supreme Court defines monopoly power as ''the power to control prices or exclude competition.'' A firm is known to be monopolistic if it can successfully raise prices substantially above the competitive level. The investigation found that Microsoft had been using its licensing agreements with the PC hardware manufacturers or OEMs to force the bundling of the windows 95 operating systems with their web browser Internet Explorer or IE. The stipulations required every PC that the Original Equipment