Regardless of the outcome of the MSFT antitrust trial (and it may be years in coming), the best way to hold the Seattle gang's feet to the fire is the existence of an alternative which IS standards compliant. On top of that, if this browser runs on multiple platforms, is embeddable for applications to customize, and has a small enough footprint for cell phones and handheld devices to use, you've got a winner!! I cannot emphasize this last point enough, since we are on the cusp of the 4th revolution: communications for the masses. MSFT may well "win" most of its case on appeal, but lose the war as the ego of Mr. Bill relegates the desktop to a smaller and smaller part of the information society. The world needs a real alternative to IE for the wireless internet, to avoid a MSFT dominated universe. As it becomes clearer that the Evil Empire has such grand designs, Mozilla will attract tremendous sponsorship from everyone else, if only to champion the underdog and preserve freedom of choice. No man is God, and this includes John Rockefeller and Bill Gates. Their sin is pride, and his ego ultimately will be his own undoing...

Office 200x featuring unique browsing technology because of its tight integration with IE of course </fake ad>

I'm pretty sure they will find some way to ignore the standards (;P) even if I like your, somewhat idealistic, representation of the breakup very much.

If you read the actual document the government turned in, it restricts Microsoft from doing anything that they've done for about 4 years, at least. It even forces them to allow OEMs to customize Windows however the hell they want to. And Office will be on Linux in no time flat, and would hopefully be redone from the ground up for quality and software modularity/less dependency on Windows, etc. I think this deal would be perfect. Woohoo! Go Justice! Woohoo!

Thus far, Microsoft's motivation for developing their web browser has been to maintain it's desktop monopoly; to require you to use MSWindows to take full advantage of the internet. That is the motivation behind all of their "innovative" software, after all.

If the development of IE is moved away from the company controlling the OS, what would be the motivation to continue development of a free IE? Separating M$ OS from the rest of the M$ software (with the exception of Office, perhaps) eliminates the current development goal behind most of this software.

MS didn't develop Visual J++ because they thought they could make some money selling a nifty Java development tool. They developed Visual J++ so that they could tie Java developers, and their software, to Windows.

Likewise with IE, and most of their software. IE wasn't developed so that they could give away a really nifty Web Browser to the world, IE was developed to tie Internet users to Windows. MacIE and MacOffice exist as a bargaining chip, for when Apple does somthing that might threaten Windows. The current MS will never develop software for an OS that they cannot manipulate.

What's worse is that the initial risk of developing all of this software is next to zero, as funding is generated by the OS tax collected from the sale of nearly every PC sold in the world.

If development of IE is moved away from Microsoft (the OS company) there's no reason for the other MS to develop a non-standards compliant browser, however, there's no reason for them to develop a standards compliant browser, either.

And how's this breakup supposed to avoid microsofts to develop their products just like yesterday? And it's only a matter of time when there will be only one monopoly-microsoft again. I quess they didn't consider all the options here, this is very stupid conclusion.

It isn't the "conclusion" that's stupid. Broken up, with company officers unable to own shares in both entities, the company not only won't even be in a position to tie programs to the OS to lock in customers, there simply won't be the motivation to do so.

First thing i'd like to say is, "How Many Microsofts Do You Want Today?"

Anyway, something like Windows going open source will be very bad in the short term; computing will be even more confusing to newbies than it is now, there will no longer be this all powerful base for the software industry. But in the long term it would be great, as it would start of another era of tremendous innovation, growth in technology and so on. It will also inevitably create a void on the OS shell front, a void that Mozilla can fill up. A Mozilla desktop from which you can run your Mozilla and native OS programs. Sounds great.

IE going open source will be great too. Mozilla would have real, fair competition. At least for a while, the browser battles will be fought on grounds of better software, not on monopolistic marketing strategies.

Breaking up MS into 2 companies: 1 for OS and one for apps is just making 2 monopolies out of 1.

-Chris

What would prevent MS2 from just licensing the source of IE to MS1 so they could build their OS around it? This way the IE team would get sufficient revenue from their product to continue development and the IE/Windows combo would still rein as king of all electronic media! This could also have the side effect of making IE an even more integrated part of Windows, making the two indistinguishable from one another. Obviously they would be forced to offer the licensing to other companies to so they wouldn't break any more laws, but who would want to pay for the license to the IE source when they can simply use the free ActiveX control to integrate it into a product (or better yet get the Mozilla source for free). Even if they break the company into two I don't see anything changing except that we will have two giant Microsofts to rule the business.