The Effect of Microsoft's Action in the OEM Channel

d. Effect of Microsoft’s Actions in the OEM Channel

239. Microsoft has largely succeeded in exiling Navigator from the crucial OEM distribution channel. Even though a few OEMs continue to offer Navigator on some of their PCs, Microsoft has caused the number of OEMs offering Navigator, and the number of PCs on which they offer it, to decline dramatically.

     
     

     Before 1996, Navigator enjoyed a substantial and growing presence on the desktop of new PCs. Over the next two years, however, Microsoft’s actions forced the number of copies of Navigator distributed through the OEM channel down to an exiguous fraction of what it had been.

     
     

     By January 1998, Kempin could report to his superiors at Microsoft that, of the sixty OEM sub-channels (15 major OEMs each offering corporate desktop, consumer/small business, notebook, and workstation PCs), Navigator was being shipped through only four. Furthermore, most of the PCs shipped with Navigator featured the product in a manner much less likely to lead to usage than if its icon appeared on the desktop.

     
     

     For example, Sony only featured Navigator in a folder rather than on the desktop, and Gateway only shipped Navigator on a separate CD-ROM rather than pre-installed on the hard drive. By the beginning of January 1999, Navigator was present on the desktop of only a tiny percentage of the PCs that OEMs were shipping.

240. To the extent Netscape is still able to distribute Navigator through the OEM channel, Microsoft has substantially increased the cost of that distribution. Although in January 1999 (in the midst of this trial), Compaq suddenly decided to resume the pre-installation of Navigator on its Presario PCs, Compaq’s reversal came only after Netscape agreed to provide Compaq with approximately $700,000 worth of free advertising.

241. In sum, Microsoft successfully secured for Internet Explorer — and foreclosed to Navigator — one of the two distribution channels that leads most efficiently to the usage of browsing software.

     
     

     Even to the extent that Navigator retains some access to the OEM channel, Microsoft has relegated it to markedly less efficient forms of distribution than the form vouchsafed for Internet Explorer, namely, prominent placement on the Windows desktop. Microsoft achieved this feat by using a complementary set of tactics.

     
     

     First, it forced OEMs to take Internet Explorer with Windows and forbade them to remove or obscure it — restrictions which both ensured the prominent presence of Internet Explorer on users’ PC systems and increased the costs attendant to pre-installing and promoting Navigator.

     
     

     Second, Microsoft imposed additional technical restrictions to increase the cost of promoting Navigator even more.

     
     

     Third, Microsoft offered OEMs valuable consideration in exchange for commitments to promote Internet Explorer exclusively. Finally, Microsoft threatened to penalize individual OEMs that insisted on pre-installing and promoting Navigator.

     
     

     Although Microsoft’s campaign to capture the OEM channel succeeded, it required a massive and multifarious investment by Microsoft; it also stifled innovation by OEMs that might have made Windows PC systems easier to use and more attractive to consumers.

     
     

     That Microsoft was willing to pay this price demonstrates that its decision-makers believed that maximizing Internet Explorer’s usage share at Navigator’s expense was worth almost any cost.

     
     

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This court case Civil Action No. 98-1232 (TPJ) retrieved on 2-09-2023, 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.