zlacker

Didn't they lose a pretty big antitrust lawsuit over this a couple decades ago? Has the regulatory landscape changed to the point that they think they can just start this right up again? Or is it more, there's no way anyone could believe a Microsoft browser could dominate anymore?

>>nsxwol+(OP)
Microsoft is no longer a monopolist. The world has changed dramatically since 1995-1997.

>>bachme+h3
They have 75% of desktop/laptop OS market share. That's plenty.

>>nsxwol+(OP)
They did not. Even when they were under the settlement agreement and had to prompt for installation of another default browser at first boot IE was still included in the OS and certain items opened in IE no matter what your default browser was set to. This is the same situation. They are not blocking setting of the browser for general urls but for edge links. Edge links are used by particular software in Windows. For instance the help system always opens pages in Edge.

Whether this is the correct thing for them to do is debatable, but it is not the behavior which got them in trouble during the early browser wars.

>>Dylan1+J7
The first step in antitrust is to define the market. It seems unlikely that desktop/laptop would be considered a separate market - mobile is just too capable (how do you even draw the line between an iPad Pro and a laptop?) But even within desktop/laptop you have Apple plus Chromebooks and to some extent Linux as substitutes. There were no serious substitutes in the 1995-1997 time period that led to the antitrust proceedings.

>>bachme+OE
Phones are not capable in the same way. And I think this number already counts chromebooks. Let me know what your revised number is for ipad pros.

> There were no serious substitutes in the 1995-1997 time period that led to the antitrust proceedings.

Macs were just fine then, and they're just fine now. They couldn't run all important business software then, and they can't run all important business software now.

The situation has not changed much.