> Microsoft would do this in the days when it was particularly powerful
They were so notorious for it back then, that when they attempted to do it to Netscape, Marc Andreessen went into the meeting knowing ahead of time to document everything. That documentation was useful later during the anti-trust proceedings.
From the 2000 Wired article The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth:
> It was two months later, on June 21, that Reback received a call from Jim Clark, the chair of one of his firm's newest clients, Netscape. Earlier that day, Clark said, a team of Microsoft executives had visited Netscape's headquarters, met with its CEO, Jim Barksdale, its technical wunderkind, Marc Andreessen, and its marketing chief, Mike Homer, and offered them a "special relationship." If Netscape would abandon much of the browser market to Microsoft; if it would agree not to compete with Microsoft in other areas; if it would let Microsoft invest in Netscape and have a seat on its board, everything between the two companies would be wine and roses. If not ...
> "They basically said, OK, we have this nice shit sandwich for you," Mike Homer told me later. "You can put a little mustard on it if you want. You can put a little ketchup on it. But you're going to eat the fucking thing or we're going to put you out of business."
> The next day, Reback phoned Joel Klein, the former deputy White House counsel who had recently been named the second-ranking lawyer in the antitrust division, and persuaded him to send Netscape a CID for some detailed notes Andreessen had taken during the meeting.
> Asked by Tobey why he'd taken notes on the meeting, Andreessen replied, "I thought that it might be a topic of discussion at some point with the US government on antitrust issues." (During the trial, Microsoft would cite the comment as evidence that the meeting was a setup, and Netscape and the DOJ would retort that Andreessen was just being sarcastic. "Bullshit, on both counts," Andreessen told me. "I'd read all the books. I knew their MO. We were a little startup. They were Microsoft, coming to town. I thought, Uh-oh. I know what happens now.")
They were so notorious for it back then, that when they attempted to do it to Netscape, Marc Andreessen went into the meeting knowing ahead of time to document everything. That documentation was useful later during the anti-trust proceedings.
From the 2000 Wired article The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth:
> It was two months later, on June 21, that Reback received a call from Jim Clark, the chair of one of his firm's newest clients, Netscape. Earlier that day, Clark said, a team of Microsoft executives had visited Netscape's headquarters, met with its CEO, Jim Barksdale, its technical wunderkind, Marc Andreessen, and its marketing chief, Mike Homer, and offered them a "special relationship." If Netscape would abandon much of the browser market to Microsoft; if it would agree not to compete with Microsoft in other areas; if it would let Microsoft invest in Netscape and have a seat on its board, everything between the two companies would be wine and roses. If not ...
> "They basically said, OK, we have this nice shit sandwich for you," Mike Homer told me later. "You can put a little mustard on it if you want. You can put a little ketchup on it. But you're going to eat the fucking thing or we're going to put you out of business."
> The next day, Reback phoned Joel Klein, the former deputy White House counsel who had recently been named the second-ranking lawyer in the antitrust division, and persuaded him to send Netscape a CID for some detailed notes Andreessen had taken during the meeting.
> Asked by Tobey why he'd taken notes on the meeting, Andreessen replied, "I thought that it might be a topic of discussion at some point with the US government on antitrust issues." (During the trial, Microsoft would cite the comment as evidence that the meeting was a setup, and Netscape and the DOJ would retort that Andreessen was just being sarcastic. "Bullshit, on both counts," Andreessen told me. "I'd read all the books. I knew their MO. We were a little startup. They were Microsoft, coming to town. I thought, Uh-oh. I know what happens now.")
https://www.wired.com/2000/11/microsoft-7/