A battle has raged in the United States courts between the U.S. government and the Microsoft Corporation, headed by Bill Gates, since 1990. The federal government has maintained that Microsofts monopolistic practices are harmful to United States citizens, creating higher prices and potentially downgrading software quality, and should therefore be stopped, while Microsoft and its supporters claim that they are not breaking any laws, and are just doing good business. Microsofts antitrust problems began for them in the early months of 1990, when the Federal Trade Commission began investigating them for possible violations of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, which was designed to stop the formation of monopolies. After several years of investigation, in August of 1993, the FTC finally decided to hand the case over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice moved quickly, with Anne K. Bingaman, head of the Antitrust Division of the D.O.J., leading the way. The case was finally ended on July 15th, 1994, with Microsoft signing a consent settlement. The settlement focused on Microsofts selling practices with computer manufacturers. Up until now, Microsoft would sell MS-DOS and Microsofts other operating systems to original equipment manufacturer (OEMs) at a 60% discount if that OEM agreed to pay a royalty to Microsoft for every single computer that they sold regardless if it had a Microsoft operating system installed on it or not. After the settlement, Microsoft would be forced to sell their operating systems according to the number of computers shipped with a Microsoft Operating system installed, and not for computers with other operating systems. Another practice that the Justice Department accused Microsoft of was that Microsoft would specify a minimum number of operating systems that the retailer had to buy, thus eliminating any chance for another operating system vendor to get their system installed until the...
