OSNews

The antitrust laws in the US and the EU are all about preventing a company that has a monopoly in one area, using that to gain market share or market control in an other area.

Microsoft has been found guilty of that in both continents. The US ruled they used there desktop install base to remove control the Internet Browser market. The did this by bundling for free a product that used to be paid for by the OEM or consumer from another company. They then wrote financial contracts with OEM companies to encourage them not to included the competitors products.

In the EU they were accused of reducing or attempting to reduce the market share of other media players and providers by the way they enhanced the media player to be a complete entertainment program like 3rd party applications that were previously purchased seperatly.

Now they plan to do the same to the Virus and firewall market.

These laws exist for two reasons:
1. To ensure competition can exist and provide better products to the consumer (note afte MS controlled the browser no significant advances were made for over 5 years)
2. To ensure smaller companies can remian viable against fair competition (Netscape, Real Networks, Zone Labs, Mcafee AV)