Summary of Government Proposal for Microsoft Breakup

What the government wants, mostly in its own words, explained parenthetically in ours:

Split Microsoft into two entities, one would own the operating system business, including the Windows operating system. The other entity would own the remainder of Microsoft's assets, including the Office software package, the Web browser Internet Explorer and the cable television station MSNBC.

Microsoft can not force consumers to take a Microsoft product when they would prefer a competitor's. (Central to the government's case was the argument that Microsoft unnaturally tied Internet Explorer, its Web browser, into Windows in an effort to illegally stifle Netscape's Communicator browser.)

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