Evaluating Anit Trust Legisiation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Evaluating Anit Trust Legisiation - Essay Example On the 18th of May, 1998, US Department of justice and other twenty US states filed a court case against Microsoft Corporation on the issue of abusing its monopolistic power in handling both operating system sales and web browser sales. The merging of Microsoft Corporation and Internet explorer web browser has alleged to be the responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars causing competing web browser's malfunctioning incidents. Microsoft responded that the merging of these two companies is just a marketing strategy in the hope of further innovating their products and get ahead over their competitors. Microsoft also explained that the two (Windows and Explorer) were now the same product and were inextricably linked together thereby giving consumers all the benefits of IE for free (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_antitrust_case, 2006). However, it has been proven that Microsoft really did some illegal acts of misleading the consumers and manipulating the Windows programs so as the create problems when downloading the competitors' web browsers. The impact of these illegal acts can directly affect the consumers. The consumers are, of course, the end users of these Microsoft and Internet explorer programs.