Criticism of Windows XP - Antitrust Concerns

Antitrust Concerns

In light of the United States v. Microsoft case which resulted in Microsoft being convicted for illegally abusing its operating system monopoly to overwhelm competition in other markets, Windows XP has drawn fire for integrating user applications such as Windows Media Player and Windows Messenger into the operating system, as well as for its close ties to the Windows Live ID service.

In 2001, ProComp – a group including several of Microsoft's rivals, including Oracle, Sun, and Netscape – claimed that the bundling and distribution of Windows Media Player in Windows XP was a continuance of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior and that the integration of Windows Live ID (at the time Microsoft Passport) into Windows XP was a further example of Microsoft attempting to gain a monopoly in web services. Both of these claims were rebutted by the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) and the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), both partially funded by Microsoft. The battle being fought by fronts for each side was the subject of a heated exchange between Oracle's Larry Ellison and Microsoft's Bill Gates.

Microsoft responded on its "Freedom to Innovate" web site, pointing out that in earlier versions of Windows, Microsoft had integrated tools such as disk defragmenters, graphical file managers, and TCP/IP stacks, and there had been no protest that Microsoft was being anti-competitive. Microsoft asserted that these tools had moved from special to general usage and therefore belonged in its operating system.

To avoid the possibility of an injunction, which might have delayed the release of Windows XP, Microsoft changed its licensing terms to allow PC manufacturers to hide access to Internet Explorer (but not remove it). Competitors dismissed this as a trivial gesture. Later, Microsoft released a utility as part of Service Pack 1 (SP1) which allows icons and other links to bundled software such as Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Windows Messenger (not to be confused with the similar-named Windows Live Messenger, formerly MSN Messenger) to be removed. The components themselves remain in the system; Microsoft maintains that they are necessary for key Windows functionality (such as the HTML Help system and Windows desktop), and that removing them completely may result in unwanted consequences. One critic, Shane Brooks, has argued that Internet Explorer could be removed without adverse effects, as demonstrated with his product XPLite. Dino Nuhagic created his nLite software to remove many components from XP prior to installation of the product.

In addition, in the first release of Windows XP, the "Buy Music Online" feature always used Microsoft's Internet Explorer rather than any other web browser that the user may have set as his/her default. Under pressure from the United States Department of Justice, Microsoft released a patch in early 2004, which corrected the problem.