Antitrust Misconduct Issues 2

    A much thornier issue is that of bundling applications with Microsoft's Windows operating system without increasing the price. This issue has been the source of contention and litigation since the mid 1990's investigation by the DOJ.

    The prosecutors say that by bundling applications for which their is a separate commercial market, such as web browsers, Microsoft gains an unfair competitive advantage in these commercial markets, and drives other producers out of business. This is evidenced by the fact that before the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows, Netscape's browser had 80% of the market for web browsers, but after years of Microsoft employing this aggressive marketing tactic, their share had dropped to as low as about 30%.

    Microsoft advocates prefer to think of these applications as "features," and defend the action of bundling them with the OS as mere product improvement.

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