Microsoft free essay sample

Microsoft became more aggressive in application software for IBM- standard PCs. It began to bundle Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a popular suite, MS Office. It also began to offer competitive upgrades discounts for customers who were switching from WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Starting in 1995 and all the way to 2008, MS was the dominant provider of word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software. Internet Browsers. Bill Gates sent a memo to his top team in 1995, making it clear that their focus on the Internet is crucial to every part of their business. A section in the memo titled Competition highlighted Netscape as a new competitor born on the internet. Promising to embrace and extend the internet, MS released Internet Explorer (E), their own version of a web browser. It was offered for free and bundled with Windows. Soon after, versions of IE were available not only for Windows, but also for Apple and Unix OSs. We will write a custom essay sample on Microsoft or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page MS also made deals with Internet Service providers (ISPs) who agreed to install IE when they provided internet to their customers. They also went to he extent of allowing AOL to place their icon on the Windows desktop, even though they were competitors. Netscape tried keeping up but their costs went up and webmasters started optimizing their sites for IE and not Navigator. All of this prompted the U. S. Department of Justice to bring an antitrust case against MS in 1998. They said that MS abused the power of its OS monopoly in order to create a new monopoly in the browser market. n 2001 MS reached a settlement with the government where they were required to disclose ceratin aspect of its software code o other firms and prohibited discriminatory agreements with PC makers. It also barred MS from bundling other applications with Windows unless rival amkers had equal access to being bundled with Windows. Java. As the internet went up, so did a programming language called Java, from Sun M icrosystems. MS licensed Java from Sun in 195. MS then developed and promoted a version of Java that ran best with Windows and not so well across other platforms. Sun sued them for creating a polluted version of Java and later for making Java ncompatible with Windows XP. The government later found an e-mail from a MS employee that advocated stealing and killing Java. The settlement reached in 2004 included a $1. 6 billion payment to Sun and resolved the dispute. Linux. News about a new threat starting circulating throughout MSs top ranks: open-source software, more specifically the Linux operating system. At first, Linux was used mostly on servers, but it was predicted that they would soon expand to desktops and laptops. Microsoft launched a response to Linux to include customer education fforts, opening the MS server OS code to some degree, selling stripped-down versions of their server OS at lower prices, and looking for competitive weaknesses in Linux in a lab. Later on, MS made a deal with Novell to work with them to make Windows server OS compatible with Novells version of Linux. Customers were scared of being sued by MS for using Linux without permission, but MS promised not to sue people that didnt pay for Novells Linux, without saying anything about other Linux versions. Some people saw this as a threat.