Well, you of course have the freedom to bundle your software however you want. But you're not a company with one of the most effective monopolies in the world history, with a history of abusing that dominant position, and trying to use the dominant position of one of their products to create a monopoly in another market. Is it unfair that you personally are treated different than Microsoft? Maybe, but laws aren't necessarily about fairness.

Competition laws exist for a reason. In the real world, there are points where regulation is needed to ensure a working market. Do you think it's "unfair" that companies in an oligopoly aren't allowed to form a price-fixing cartel. Is it unfair to forbid predatory pricing to drive out competitors? Or that companies might be forced to sell services to their competitors at regulated prices? That two companies with large market shares in a market with little competition might not be allowed to merge?

I guess to somebody all of that might be unfair. But I for one would not want to live in an unregulated corporate dystopia.

Monopolists are held to different standards, on purpose, for a variety of reasons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly (in particular see the Law section)

This is indeed specifically a case in which it may be illegal for Microsoft to do something even as it is legal for Apple to do the same thing, because one is(/was) a monopoly and the other is not.

Bundling stuff is an attempt to limit competition. Similar to making it difficult for others to manufacture things which work with your product (as non standard extenstions, parts etc.) It's not a problem if it's easy to shop around but once you do it from dominant market position it becomes abuse. Prime example is bundling cell phones with contracts in US. The world would be better place (well, at least for consumers) if that was banned. If banning things leads to good outcomes it's one justification to make it a law. That's the way anti-monopoly laws came about.

Agree completely about bundling and the mobile phone industry. However, the point of IE was that it wasn't a standalone browser but a set of components that could be used by many other applications. For example, Microsoft Office didn't need to have its own HTML rendering engine, but could use the same rendering object as IE.

There is a massive difference between just bundling your additional software with your operating system and integrating (for no technical reason) your software with the operating system so that using an alternative is extremely difficult if not impossible (for the average user).

While I do believe that Microsoft should be able to include whatever it wants with Windows I want to be able to replace those parts with alternatives with zero friction.

Imagine if the US and the EU had not taken Microsoft up on this? We would still be using a god awful web browser which would have more than likely stalled the web from growing the way it has over the past decade and therefore not allowing a lot of the amazing web services we have today to exist. The same with media players. Look how crappy WMP is still compared to things like VLC. Or god forbid we would still have to buy things like CyberLink PowerDVD to play back DVDs because they are "allowed" by Microsoft to replace the built in media player for things.

Forcing Microsoft to split things up has done wonders for the IT world and while a lot of people see the huge fines as pointless they are very much not.

In the 90s Microsoft used its power to stall the growth of the web by several years. It was not until Firefox (and more recently Chrome) came along that Microsoft pulled its thumb from its ass and started to improve Internet Explorer much like it was not until Linux really got a hold in the server space in the early 2000s that Microsoft started to improve its server operating systems.

The same can be said for many parts of the IT world. Databases for example. Pressure from MySQL and PostgrSQL undoubtedly forced Microsoft to improve SQL Server (who remembers how god awful SQL 2000 was?). Even programming languages like Java and Python, etc. pushed Microsoft to make better languages (C#, F#) and platforms (.NET) and give away free tools (Visual Studio Express).

They had to as they had made the entry level to developing for the Windows platform (client and server) too expensive for individuals so they were going with the free tools as that was the only route someone could take if they wanted to get into development.

That is why we now have individual targeted tools for people to start with (the Express line as mentioned) so that Microsoft does not lose everyone to the free alternatives.

Pretty much the only product line that has survived the old Microsoft ways is the Office line because even with OpenOffice businesses couldn't make the jump for compatibility reasons (another awful thing about Microsoft).

Things are starting to change with things like Google Docs (mainly for small businesses) however I hope to see more competition in the next decade as with HTML5 it will be possible to provide a solid Office replacement as a web app.

The key for the enterprise in my opinion is the ability to offer this internally rather than an externally hosted solution like Google Docs though. Time will tell if I am right but I would bet that I am.

Of course :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Have you tried to buy an UEFI enabled PC in the EU without having to deal with Microsoft?. I dont think so.

Hey - they were slapped down in the US and the EU for good reason. Every day I have to use an IE only intranet portal I am reminded of muppets who question why we should remember the judgement against M$.