No Government Intervention

One possibility -- the one that Microsoft supports -- is for the court to rule that Microsoft may continue to operate as it has been, including Internet Explorer as an integral part of the Windows operating system.

This option has the advantage of letting the market regulate itself rather than substituting government short-sightedness or stupidity for competition. It gives consumers the benefits that come from tightly integrated software products, and it avoids the pitfall of discouraging successful innovation by penalizing a company that grew to become a market leader through good business sense, capable product development, and creative innovation.

This option has the disadvantage of allowing Microsoft to continue leveraging its dominance in the operating system market sector to drive out competition in other related market spaces through anti-competitive practices. Supporters of non-intervention must contend with the specter of a future Microsoft behemoth whose powerful reach has spread across nearly every personal-computing software market. Given the peculiar economics governing the software industry, taking no action to curtail Microsoft seems dangerously likely to lead to the destruction of any meaningful competition in PC software.