Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
against Microsoft. The claims of this suit were that since Internet Explorer was
included in every copy of Windows, that method of distribution was anticompetit-
ive.
This was a very messy case with strong opinions on both sides. The decision
by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson might have split Microsoft into two compan-
ies. However, upon appeal, the split was not required. Microsoft was required to
publish application program interfaces (APIs) and to permit certain third-party ap-
plications to connect to Windows.
The case itself has been controversial, with some saying Microsoft was given
monopolistic powers as a result of the appeal. These are legal issues that I am not
qualified to discuss, but there are many articles by lawyers who examine a number
of issues outside the scope of this topic. The Microsoft antitrust suit was front-
page news at the end of the decade and into the following decade.
Bill Gates testified and apparently did not make a good impression due to nu-
merous instances of forgetfulness so that he could not answer specific questions.
The entire case was very messy, and almost everyone who participated ended up
with tarnished reputations.
In the aftermath, open-source software has been able to compete successfully
against the browsers of major companies such as Microsoft and Apple. For ex-
ample, Firefox and Google Chrome are now both highly successful competitors
against Internet Explorer.
Other Innovations of the 1990s
Another innovation in this decade was the development of the Linux open-source
operating system by Linus Torvalds and colleagues. Linux was an important tech-
nology and also served as a useful model for open-source development.
One major invention that greatly expanded the use of computers for research
was the development of the Google search engine by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
in 1997. Search engines have made it possible to find information about any con-
ceivable topic on the web in a matter of seconds.
The year 1993 witnessed Windows 3.1, which departed from older versions in
not being built on the older disk operating system (DOS) but rather on a new ker-
nel.
The first of the “modern” versions of Microsoft Windows was Windows 95,
which was released in 1995 as the name implies. However, many more releases
and versions were soon to follow.
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