Microsoft's Decline

     Microsoft was a powerhouse in the technology industry all through the 1990's and early 2000's. They controlled most of the market share on everything from desktops to software. In 2001, Microsoft started becoming involved in lawsuits filed against it due to anti-trust violations.

     These series of lawsuits filed by the US government are what eventually led to its decline. During this time period everyone at Microsoft was a competitor and fought tooth and nail to make sure they stayed on top. Bill Gates did not want to lose and made that very clear to his employees at the time. Microsoft's intentions weren't bad though, everyone just wanted to win and was willing to pretty much do whatever they could in order to do so.

     The lawsuits filed against Microsoft were mainly due to the fact that when you purchased a desktop it came with windows software and the mandatory search browsers of internet explorer. This is what got it into a lot of trouble. While dominating most of the market share and pre loading its products with with Internet explorer, competing search engines were pretty much pushed aside.



     Once Microsoft got to court things started slowing down. Everyone working at Microsoft thought they had been doing every thing right, but became extremely cautious while under investigation. Along with being cautious, many of the high ranking executives were distracted with the court case, and gathering everything they could that would help their cause. While in court fear had spread around the company as people didn't know if it was going to split into smaller companies or if major changes were going to be made. It was at this point Google slide in the backdoor.


     Once the ruling made it so Microsoft could no longer block search engine competition Google was able to grow and become prominent in the world of the internet. Google was also able to learn from the mistakes of Microsoft, making sure it grew in a way that wouldn't get the attention of the federal government for anti-trust violations.