Microsoft's ISVs Scheme Was Exposed by Navigator: What Really Went Down

5. Directly Inducing ISVs to Rely on Microsoft’s Browsing Technologies Rather than APIs Exposed by Navigator

337. Since 1995, more and more ISVs have, like Intuit, enhanced the features of their applications by designing them to take advantage of the type of content and functionality accessible through browsing software. An increasing number of these applications actually rely on browsing software to function.

     
     

     Microsoft’s efforts to maximize Internet Explorer’s share of browser usage at Navigator’s expense were intended to encourage developers to use Windows specific technologies when they wrote their applications to rely on a browser.

     
     

     In addition to creating this incentive indirectly, by disadvantaging Navigator, Microsoft also targeted individual ISVs directly, extracting from them commitments to make their Web-centric applications reliant on technology specific to Internet Explorer.

338. Because of the importance of “time-to-market” in the software industry, ISVs developing software to run on Windows products seek to obtain beta releases and other technical information relating to Windows as early and as consistently as possible.

     
     

     Since Microsoft decides which ISVs receive betas and other technical support, and when they will receive it, the ability of an ISV to compete in the marketplace for software running on Windows products is highly dependent on Microsoft’s cooperation. Netscape learned this lesson in 1995.

     
     

339. In dozens of “First Wave” agreements signed between the fall of 1997 and the spring of 1998, Microsoft has promised to give preferential support, in the form of early Windows 98 and Windows NT betas, other technical information, and the right to use certain Microsoft seals of approval, to important ISVs that agree to certain conditions.

     
     

     One of these conditions is that the ISVs use Internet Explorer as the default browsing software for any software they develop with a hypertext-based user interface. Another condition is that the ISVs use Microsoft’s “HTML Help,” which is accessible only with Internet Explorer, to implement their applications’ help systems.

     
     

340. By exchanging its vital support for the agreement of leading ISVs to make Internet Explorer the default browsing software on which their products rely, Microsoft has ensured that many of the most popular Web-centric applications will rely on browsing technologies found only in Windows and has increased the likelihood that the millions of consumers using these products will use Internet Explorer rather than Navigator.

     
     

     Microsoft’s relations with ISVs thus represent another area in which it has applied its monopoly power to the task of protecting the applications barrier to entry.

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This court case Civil Action No. 98-1232 (TPJ) retrieved on 2-10-2023, from justice.gov is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction.