A judge ruled bundling a free browser into Windows broke US antitrust law
In 1998, the US Department of Justice and twenty states sued Microsoft for using its Windows monopoly to crush rival browser Netscape, partly by bundling Internet Explorer into Windows free and pressuring computer makers not to promote alternatives. In 2000, judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered Microsoft split in two. An appeals court overturned the breakup in 2001, but Microsoft still settled, agreeing to let computer makers and users choose which software appeared on the desktop.