The fining of Microsoft did anything but help the end user - the only people who made any kind of money were the lawyers.
You need to look at the full story behind Microsoft as to why they were fined in the first place and once you do although you can see why it happened you cannot really see how it benefitted anybody.
I was pleased to see you used the words "almost monopoly".
I'd go so far as to say "almost the dictionary definition of a monopoly".
One example would be that a monopoly will continue to increase the price of their product every year as there is no alternative.
However if you take Windows 95, inflation and Win98, WinME, WinNT, WinXP, Vista you'll see that in real terms MS products haven't actually increased in price at all.
Microsoft were fined because they held a massive percentage of the OS market which meant that their media player and Internet browser by default appeared on nearly every users desktop whereas users had to actively download other browsers, other media players.
A lot of Microsoft's rivals felt this was unfair and hence the main part of the lawsuites against Microsoft.
The fact is that nobody had a good alternative out there - which is something you cannot blame Microsoft for.
Microsoft were late to the party with IE, yet somehow they managed to make progress even though the likes of Netscape had 4-5 years advantage over MS.
IE2 was dire, IE3 was terrible.
However come the release of IE4 it was game, set & match Microsoft - nothing could touch IE4.
Netscape watched as their 4-5 years advantage vanished into nothing because they spent all their time sat on their backsides rolling out minor updates, nothing substantial and still charging for their browser.
The same could be said for Media Player - it played all of the popular formats and was lite and took up little memory, something Real & Apple simply could not claim (the big two against MS and Media Player).
So was it really fair MS were fined because nobody had bothered to get an alternative out there?
People will always hunt out and seek the best application for a job so the very fact people were using IE4 rather than Netscape 4 speaks volumes.
I'm also not sure where you get this idea about MS roll-outs 97-00 being a joke etc.
I've always had to pick the best OS and application for a job in all the roles I've performed.
Now as an IT Manager I have to choose between Microsoft and Linux on a daily basis.
On some occasions the Microsoft products win by a lot (Exchange) and in others Linux (Appache under Ubuntu) makes the better choice.
The lack of choice around the 97-00 era was because there wasn't anything out there that rivalled the MS way of doing things.
Novell and NDS was a real alternative to WinNT, however Windows 2000 and the release of AD1.0 was the death call for NDS.
NDS (with its years head start) was still more powerful than AD1 yet people flocked to Win2k AD as it was simply easier to configure and look after.
Novell had their chance, AD1.1 was released - game, set & match.
You cannot blame Microsoft for people not releasing products as good as their own.
But that is not MS, that is the in house decision maker.
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