The stuff Google is getting away with today makes late 1990's Microsoft look quite benign in comparison.

> The last time a tech behemoth was found guilty and remedies were contemplated, the Bush administration turned it into a slap on the wrist for MIcrosoft.

WTF is it with idiots always blaming the president for everything that didn't go their way during his term just because they voted for the other guy? The Bush admin had nothing to do with it. Microsoft was found guilty, then the judge ran his mouth to the media about the case, which is a code of conduct violation, and Microsoft used that as the basis for its appeal. This was all during the Clinton admin. During that original trial, if you look at Microsoft's, especially Bill Gate's disposition in particular, he came off as cocky, above the law, etc. Microsoft learned from that and changed tact (Bill Gates later even criticized his own conduct during the trial.) Nevertheless, the case had to be presented to a different judge, though the finding of fact that Microsoft was guilty remained.

A few things had also changed during this time though -- by then, it was already common for OSes to include web browsers for free, and basically nobody (except maybe Netscape) wanted an OS that didn't have one. (I don't know if many people recall how it was back then, but downloading a browser when you didn't already have one was actually kind of frustrating -- especially if you kept it on a floppy, which weren't the most reliable storage medium at that time.) So it no longer made any sense to make the tying claim. Between that and Microsoft's revised tact, this was a harder case now.

So what ended up happening was a settlement with a consent decree, which Microsoft remarked thus:

> Lawsuits brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, 18 states, and the District of Columbia in two separate actions were resolved through a Consent Decree that took effect in 2001 and a Final Judgment entered in 2002. These proceedings imposed various constraints on our Windows operating system businesses. These constraints include limits on certain contracting practices, mandated disclosure of certain software program interfaces and protocols, and rights for computer manufacturers to limit the visibility of certain Windows features in new PCs. We believe we are in full compliance with these rules. However, if we fail to comply with them, additional restrictions could be imposed on us that would adversely affect our business.

Side note: It's almost as if there is a 23 year old lesson here that Apple never learned.

Anyways, if you look at things in retrospect, the settlement largely worked. Microsoft was thence forth heavily limited in the douchebaggery they were able to get away with, (and Apple did get away with until yesterday) and by 2015 they were literally giving Windows away for free since it was far less relevant by then. Nowadays the only significant leverage they have is with Azure, which is less because Microsoft is smart and more because Google still thinks that you can run an PaaS/IaaS service just like an email and search service: Ignore anything and everything that your customers ask for, and kill off every product you create as soon as your customers finally figure out what it does.

> the Bush administration turned it into a slap on the wrist for MIcrosoft

That's quite revisionist. Legal pundits long assumed throughout the entire legal battle that it wasn't possible to break up a company the size of Microsoft effectively to achieve what their goal was, as the ruling was the result of a tie in with products developed in a common team (it wasn't like the internet explorer was a separate division). Additionally it wasn't the bush administration that turned it into a slap on the wrist. The Circuit Courts found that ruling could not be enforced the way it was prop

Oh yea and Chrome.

Because the market will drift towards one standard market which google controls. Google is the exchange where buyers and sellers come together. No one else can compete. No new market place can arise, to sell ad space you need websites to sign up for your market but no one will because there are no buyers. Once Google became dominant the other markets collapsed. Ads are the castle where google makes 90% of their money. Everything else, gmail, search, android, is just a mote to protect the castle.

Thi

Illegal monopoly means they were engaged in anticompetitive behavior by leveraging said monopoly to stifle competition, there's a key distinction there. That's what people (and the law, mostly) care about.

If you're the dominant business in a sector because you just do it the best and basically aren't a dick about it you generally won't run afoul of the law.