Well this is an old story now, but let me make a point about it today. Microsoft has been blamed by many that it is not giving its competitors a fair chance of competing. This is about mainly two products that Microsoft bundles with its operating system – Internet Explorer and Media Player. Another one that could be added it live messenger.

I think this had relevance to some extent in the back days. The Internet was not widely available. Even if it was there, it was not a broadband and downloading programs was not an existing concept. People would usually get free softwares through references. In such a scenario, it was true that the PC users would go by the softwares that were with the operating systems. So Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc. enjoyed the market leadership for just sitting in the machine along with the OS.

But now the scenario is completely different. Everywhere, machines are live and connected. People can download and install whatever software they wish including other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. Similarly one can use Real Media or Jet Audio for playing multimedia content instead of Windows Media player. I really believe in this scenario when almost every machine is part of the Internet, Microsoft cannot be blamed for not giving a fair chance to its competitors. Take my example. I have been comfortable with Firefox rather IE, particularly after IE7 and at the same time changed a couple of machines since then. The moment I would get the machine, I would first download and install Firefox on my machine. For the past two machines I owned, I have never used IE. So how come did Microsoft not give a fair chance to its competitor like Mozilla of earning market share.

I think this issue was valid only if Microsoft would block installation or downloading of competitor products. This issue has not been heard of, since long time but people have raised fingers at Microsoft and even it had to pay huge fines or penalties which were unjustifiable, I believe.