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Here's the wrap-up describing the negative effect on consumers:
VII. THE EFFECT ON CONSUMERS OF MICROSOFT'S EFFORTS TO PROTECT THE
APPLICATIONS BARRIER TO ENTRY
408. The debut of Internet Explorer and its rapid improvement gave Netscape
an incentive to improve Navigator's quality at a competitive rate. The
inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows at no separate charge increased
general familiarity with the Internet and reduced the cost to the public of
gaining access to it, at least in part because it compelled Netscape to stop
charging for Navigator. These actions thus contributed to improving the
quality of Web browsing software, lowering its cost, and increasing its
availability, thereby benefitting consumers.
409. To the detriment of consumers, however, Microsoft has done much more
than develop innovative browsing software of commendable quality and offer
it bundled with Windows at no additional charge. As has been shown,
Microsoft also engaged in a concerted series of actions designed to protect
the applications barrier to entry, and hence its monopoly power, from a
variety of middleware threats, including Netscape's Web browser and Sun's
implementation of Java. Many of these actions have harmed consumers in ways
that are immediate and easily discernible. They have also caused less
direct, but nevertheless serious and far-reaching, consumer harm by
distorting competition.
410. By refusing to offer those OEMs who requested it a version of Windows
without Web browsing software, and by preventing OEMs from removing Internet
Explorer - or even the most obvious means of invoking it - prior to
shipment, Microsoft forced OEMs to ignore consumer demand for a browserless
version of Windows. The same actions forced OEMs either to ignore consumer
preferences for Navigator or to give them a Hobson's choice of both browser
products at the cost of increased confusion, degraded system performance,
and restricted memory. By ensuring that Internet Explorer would launch in
certain circumstances in Windows 98 even if Navigator were set as the
default, and even if the consumer had removed all conspicuous means of
invoking Internet Explorer, Microsoft created confusion and frustration for
consumers, and increased technical support costs for business customers.
Those Windows purchasers who did not want browsing software - businesses, or
parents and teachers, for example, concerned with the potential for
irresponsible Web browsing on PC systems - not only had to undertake the
effort necessary to remove the visible means of invoking Internet Explorer
and then contend with the fact that Internet Explorer would nevertheless
launch in certain cases; they also had to (assuming they needed new,
non-browsing features not available in earlier versions of Windows) content
themselves with a PC system that ran slower and provided less available
memory than if the newest version of Windows came without browsing software.
By constraining the freedom of OEMs to implement certain software programs
in the Windows boot sequence, Microsoft foreclosed an opportunity for OEMs
to make Windows PC systems less confusing and more user-friendly, as
consumers desired. By taking the actions listed above, and by enticing firms
into exclusivity arrangements with valuable inducements that only Microsoft
could offer and that the firms reasonably believed they could not do
without, Microsoft forced those consumers who otherwise would have elected
Navigator as their browser to either pay a substantial price (in the forms
of downloading, installation, confusion, degraded system performance, and
diminished memory capacity) or content themselves with Internet Explorer.
Finally, by pressuring Intel to drop the development of platform-level NSP
software, and otherwise to cut back on its software development efforts,
Microsoft deprived consumers of software innovation that they very well may
have found valuable, had the innovation been allowed to reach the
marketplace. None of these actions had pro-competitive justifications.
411. Many of the tactics that Microsoft has employed have also harmed
consumers indirectly by unjustifiably distorting competition. The actions
that Microsoft took against Navigator hobbled a form of innovation that had
shown the potential to depress the applications barrier to entry
sufficiently to enable other firms to compete effectively against Microsoft
in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems. That competition
would have conduced to consumer choice and nurtured innovation. The campaign
against Navigator also retarded widespread acceptance of Sun's Java
implementation. This campaign, together with actions that Microsoft took
with the sole purpose of making it difficult for developers to write Java
applications with technologies that would allow them to be ported between
Windows and other platforms, impeded another form of innovation that bore
the potential to diminish the applications barrier to entry. There is
insufficient evidence to find that, absent Microsoft's actions, Navigator
and Java already would have ignited genuine competition in the market for
Intel-compatible PC operating systems. It is clear, however, that Microsoft
has retarded, and perhaps altogether extinguished, the process by which
these two middleware technologies could have facilitated the introduction of
competition into an important market.
412. Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's actions have
conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer
industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and
others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market
power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing
initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core
products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling
innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the
potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some
innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole
reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest.
___________/s/_______________
Thomas Penfield Jackson
U.S. District Judge
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