COMMENTARY--When I heard the news that AOL Time Warner (my employer) filed a lawsuit last Tuesday against Microsoft, I was not surprised -- just disappointed. AOL's civil suit accuses Microsoft of using its Windows software, which has long been bundled in its Internet Explorer browser, to crush Netscape, which has a competing browser and is owned by AOL.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I think Microsoft is entirely innocent of using its monopoly power to crush Netscape. The facts speak for themselves. Internet Explorer, which was developed after Netscape, now controls more than 80 percent of the market for Internet users, while Netscape is limping along as a minor subsidiary of AOL. Netscape actually lost the browser wars a long time ago, in part because of Microsoft's tactics but also because its product is no longer very good -- and no judicial ruling is going to change that. Even AOL realizes this, since it bundles Internet Explorer instead of Netscape with its own PC software.
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