ook and feel” of Windows and have assembled libraries of Windows applications. These “externalities” insulate Microsoft from competition. An example of this is the way Microsoft unfairly grabbed for Internet-browsing software with America Online ("AOL"). John Wilke reported that "Microsoft won a crucial contract with AOL by promising the company a prominent display on the Windows computer screen-in every computer shipped-if it rejected Netscape" (qtd. Wilke, B3).In all actuality, Microsoft has the power to keep companies from displacing them. According to the Supreme Court, if a firm has been attempting to exclude rivals on some basis other than efficiency, it is in violation of Section Two of the Sherman Act, which prohibits a firm from engaging in exclusionary or predatory acts.For example in United States vs. Lorain Journal Co. in Lorain, Ohio, the Supreme Court found that Lorain Journal Co. had a monopoly over local advertising. The journal wouldn’t let companies advertise on a news radio station, which was their only competition, if they wanted to advertise in their journal. Advertising in the journal was essential for local advertisers, and the journal was found guilty of trying to drive its only competition out of business.The main reason Microsoft has put Internet Explorer into its operating systems is that ISVs are being written to display information, whether stored on a computers hard drive or downloaded from the Internet in the hypertext mark-up language (“HTML”). Putting that same functionality into its operating system allows the thousands of ISVs to call on the same HTML “shared library” in the operating system and to avoid the need for each ISV to write its own version of HTML in its applications.Microsoft requires computer manufacturers to install Windows as shipped, therefore keeping them from deleting features, including Internet Explorer. Therefore, for this cond...
