U.S. vs Microsoft : The End of an Era

A case of insecure browsing by Andrew Chin.

Very good concluding remarks by Andrew Chin to the US v. Microsoft Anti-Trust suit brought six years ago. Mr. Chin was Judge Penfield's legal extern on this landmark case. A case brought by the Clinton administration and a case essentially ignored by the current administration.

What is rather ironic is that our nation's very own CERT agency which is partnership with the Department of Homeland Security recommends (but also mentions the appropriate Microsoft security fixes) that the public use a different browser than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) because of its seemingly constant security holes. The CERT report also mentions that using a different browser with only minimize the threats because you cannot actually remove IE from your system due to being integrated and sharing code with the operating system. This enables the wiley black-hat hackers to exploit the Microsoft IE security holes even if you choose to use another browser without taking proper precautions. This is a direct result of Microsoft's insistence that the browser must integrated into the operating system thus supporting their anti-competitive, predatory claims that they had to give away the IE browser resulting in the unfortunate undermining and eventual demise of the Netscape browser products. Now, we are stuck with IE buried into the de facto desktop standard operating system despite its inherent & constant computer security vunerabilities.

Now, we will never know how the Supreme Court would rule on this case. Too bad.