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It's kind of weird to get this question when you lived it and there seems to be relatively little to Google.

I mean, it was all in the news, trade magazines, business journals. Blackmailing OEM's, intentionally breaking things and making them incompatible. At least the legal battles are documented somewhere and Wikipedia has something about them, but they were just the tip of the iceberg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars

There must be book somewhere.

Dan Gilmour's articles in San Jose Mercury news from 90's should be somewhere.

Basically small software startups had to have Microsoft Strategy. They had to find way to stay out of Microsoft radar or MS would steal their work, their developers or block them. You sue them like Stack did and MS just stalls few years and pays few millions in damages. It was worth of losing in court to protect monopoly.

Big OEM's like Dell had to do what MS said or MS would up their price. It was straight blackmail from monopoly position.



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