Daily Tech History: November 5, 1999 — Judge Rules Microsoft Is a Monopoly

On November 5, 1999, a federal judge declared Microsoft a monopoly, releasing one of the most consequential rulings in tech industry history. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his “Findings of Fact” in United States v. Microsoft, a sprawling document running well over 100 pages that laid out more than 400 specific findings. Timed for a Friday evening after the stock markets closed, it concluded that Microsoft held monopoly power in “the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems worldwide” — backed by a market share that had stayed above 90% for a decade.

Jackson’s findings went further than just naming a monopoly; they described Microsoft as having used that power to harm both competitors and consumers, distorting competition rather than innovating to win it fairly. Internal company emails, including messages from Bill Gates, were cited as evidence that the behavior was deliberate. This was a findings-of-fact ruling, not a final verdict — Jackson hadn’t yet decided which laws were broken or what the remedy should be. That came the following year, when he initially ordered Microsoft split into two companies, a penalty an appeals court later overturned in 2001 even as it upheld most of the underlying factual findings.

The case, originally brought by the Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general, centered on Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows to squeeze out Netscape. It remains one of the defining antitrust battles of the internet era, and its themes — a dominant platform leveraging its position against rivals — still echo in tech antitrust cases today.

Source: CNN Money, TidBITS

Daily Tech History is a running series looking back at notable moments in technology on this date.