Justice says the company is using its near-monopoly muscle to gain ground on Netscape, the leading supplier of browsers to navigate the Internet. Amid the crossfire, consumer advocate Ralph Nader is holding a symposium Thursday and Friday in Washington to assess the software giant's impact on consumers. After the fact, the government seems to be asserting that there is something illogical or unfair about a company offering function X as part of an integrated product and offering that same function as a stand-alone product.
History is replete with examples of technology available both ways.
It sounds like there's no place Windows 95 can't go, no function that it cannot integrate under this decree. We can continue to integrate functions from any source and be guided by what we believe customers want. In government documents are examples where Microsoft forced computer manufacturers to use Internet Explorer instead of Netscape's Navigator. I don't believe Microsoft has ever tried to force anyone not to include a competitor's product on a hardware system as a condition for licensing Microsoft's software. Internet Explorer is an integrated product.