May 18, 1998: Microsoft Hit with Anti-trust Suit

In what would prove to be a four-year ordeal, Microsoft was slapped with an antitrust suit by the U.S. Justice Department and twenty states. Apple fans the world over read the headlines and rejoiced.

The reason why the lovers of all things Apple were elated wasn't as clear. Microsoft was not being sued for dominating the OS market or for unfair copying of the Mac OS (that issue had been settled far earlier). Rather, Microsoft was accused of using its already dominant position in the OS market to thwart competition, but competition more along the lines of challenges from Netscape, Real and Sun rather than Apple.

Apple fans weren't concerned with the particulars; they reasoned that anything bad for Microsoft was automatically good for Apple. The government wasn’t worried that Microsoft was illegally squashing Apple (they had long ago managed that trick within the law) but that they were illegally suppressing newer technologies largely bound to the ever-growing internet phenomenon. The government first filed suit against Microsoft on May 18, 1998.

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