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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

That laws suit was crazy. Every other competing OS came with a browser, and how are you even going to download a third party browser, if the OS doesn't come with a client you can use to download it with? The 'browser selection dialog' was just Bonkers. What if I wanted one that wasn't in the court-approved list?

I need MS to install IE, so I can use it to go and get IceWeasel, or whatever. Leave them alone!

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> how are you even going to download a third party browser, if the OS doesn't come with a client you can use to download it with?

Software was distributed offline as well. It seems like a long time ago now, but there was no shortage of AOL installation discs at the time.

(In fact, I believe both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were distributed on floppy disks at one point, although that would have been long before the antitrust case.)

2001 was at an inflection point where it was very rapidly becoming clear that argument was archaic. In any case, the fact that everyone else was giving away browsers for free is hardly a great argument that Microsoft should be prevented distributing it for free also, and if they can why not let them bundle it?

The world of 2001 was very rapidly becoming the connected world we're in now, and imposing a restriction on anyone like that now would just seem ludicrous and in fact user hostile, as it was. To me and I think anyone else paying attention back then, that was very obvious.

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