In Regard to Marc Andreessen’s “Why Software is Eating the World”

Looking back, it is ironic that Microsoft's monopoly conviction came from their decision to first license Internet Explorer for free (as in beer) then to bundle it with Windows. At the time, it was the death knell to Mr. Andreessen's Netscape as they charged for their browser and Windows had far more platform dominance than they do today.

I think that set an important standard in a lot of people's mind - I mean Microsoft made you pay for everything. The web was the brand new frontier and it was so important to them that they would license the browser for free to compete against Netscape.

The US Government said that was "evil." Looking back, I'm not so sure it was. I do think these old things are a big factor on why we are where we are with respect to the economics of the web.