The Real Stakes of the Google Antitrust Trial

The year 1998 was a pivotal one in the history of technology: Apple's introduction of the iMac helped set the company back on the path to success after it nearly went bankrupt earlier in the decade; Google was founded by two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; and Microsoft introduced Windows 98, an improved version of its popular computer operating system. That May, Microsoft also became the target of a historic antitrust lawsuit lodged by the Department of Justice and twenty states, accusing it of anticompetitive behavior in two domains: attempting to maintain its monopoly in computer operating systems and trying to monopolize a new market, that of Internet browsers. At the time, residential Wi-Fi connectivity was rapidly expanding across America, and, in the quaintly titled "browser wars," Netscape Navigator, a popular browser released by Mosaic Communications Corporation in 1994, fought Microsoft's Internet Explorer for the growing class of Web-connected consumers. Microsoft, the D.O.J. alleged, had attempted to crush Netscape by making deals with Internet-service providers that prioritized Explorer access at Netscape users' expense. The trial began that fall, and included seventy-six days of testimony that took place over more than eight months, during which a government witness alleged that a Microsoft executive had pledged to "cut off Netscape's air supply" (which a Microsoft attorney denied).