On November the 6th 2001, The United States of America and Microsoft have reached an agreement in the antitrust lawsuits filed against the Microsoft. Under this settlement, Microsoft agreed to provide more than $1 billion for teacher training, technical support, computers and Microsoft’s software, such as Windows and Office to 12,500 schools in America over the period of five years. Microsoft also agreed to give out its proprietary software codes to competitors. There are also some other things in the settlement that Microsoft must or must not do. In the whole, the agreement did not cause much harm to the company and it was just a moral victory for it is competitor Netscape. But it was not fair to start any antitrust action against Microsoft. Microsoft was not really a monopoly, nor it did anything wrong. The government only punished it because they were a large and successful company, able to earn enormous profits while creating high-quality and low-cost products and able to innovate and create new products.
Microsoft is the universal leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. It was set up as a partnership on April 4, 1975, by two friends from school, William Gates and Paul Allen. The two has worked very hard from the very beginning in developing software for personal computers. They shared the same idea and that was “to develop affordable, accessible software that would help consumers everywhere own a computer” (Gates, 1998). However, Gates and Allen could never guessed that their devotion to giving customers what they want would one day get them into a conflict with the Department of Justice. In May of the year 1998, the Justice Department of United States of America has started a lawsuit against Microsoft, because of breaking the antitrust law. The main point of the lawsuit was that it has in illegal way put together Internet Explorer with the operating system Windows with the intention to harm the competing Netscape. When Microsoft issued Windows 95, it not only did so with a free, new feature, the web browser, but it also signed contracts with personal computer makers like Dell and Compaq to include the browser. The rival Netscape started rapidly loosing market share when Microsoft came out with its own browser.