Why New Chrome OS Won't Turn Google Into a Monopoly: Analysis

From Popular Mechanics:

As Google announces its intention to create a full Web-based operating system, senior technology editor Glenn Derene has a flashback to the late '90s—when the Justice Department brought an antitrust action against Microsoft. Could Google's new browser-as-operating system kill competition?

In 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) brought an antitrust action against Microsoft for a variety of anti-competitive practices in the software industry—chief among them the bundling of the company's Internet Explorer browser into its dominant Windows operating system. The trial revealed plenty of bare-knuckled tactics and market manipulation on behalf of Microsoft, and stained the company's brand for years (perhaps forever, frankly) as a corporate bully. But the central argument from Microsoft was that, with the ascent of the Internet, the browser had become an integral part of the OS, and that competing stand-alone browsers such as Netscape and Opera were moribund products from a transition era. Microsoft contended that it needed to evolve the OS to adapt to the Internet-based era just to stay competitive as a company—a claim that seemed ludicrous back in the '90s, when the software giant seemed to have indomitable market power.

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