Let's be clear about something misunderstood about Microsoft: Microsoft won that litigation in America, which is the jurisdiction we're talking about. Framing Microsoft's browser bundling as being "considered" problematic is the same as framing someone who was acquitted as being "considered" a criminal. The Microsoft approach remains an acceptable practice in law and is one of the principle points of the Apple v. Epic fight.
> the district court ruled that Microsoft's actions constituted unlawful monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed most of the district court's judgments.
To expand on this: they basically won the right to bundle on appeal, but they were found to have abused their market power in support of IE.
First Trial:
> On June 7, 2000, the court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy.[19] According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components.
Appeal:
> On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case. The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft's systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.[29] However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future.
If you’re convicted of murder because the government dismissed black jurors due to their racial prejudices in order to assure the jury was all white and then the conviction is overturned on appeal and the prosecutor declined to reprosecute, are you guilty of murder? No. You aren’t.
More closely: if you take a plea bargain and plead guilty to breaking and entering instead of murder, are you guilty of murder? What if you only agreed to the plea bargain because you didn’t want to spend the millions of dollars to litigate again? This latter hypothetical is the reality of corporate prosecution in America: companies will settle just to avoid tainting their reputation and spending the cash to win on the merits. That doesn’t mean that they’re guilty.
Most jurisdictions do not consider American Plea bargains a proper legal process.
You are suppose to be tried in a public process by an impartial judge and a jury of peers, not making a deal behind closed doors with a prosecutor looking to advance his career.
