1 Introduction 2
1.1 Origins of Microsoft 2
1.2 Historical Background 2
2 What are the unethical practices by Microsoft? 2
2.1 Software bundling by Microsoft 2
2.2 Predatory Practices 4
2.3 Evangelism Practice 5
2.4 Unethical Labor practices 6
6 Conclusion 8
7 REFERENCE LIST 9
Introduction
Microsoft is huge in its industry; most people say that it is actually a monopoly. Bill Gate is the chairman of Microsoft with his long time college friend Paul Allen as the companies’ vice president. In the beginning, Bill and Paul started Microsoft Inc. from their dorm room writing computer program code for local companies. A new microcomputer was created in 1975 by MITS computer and Bill and Allen wrote a computer program language for the microcomputer (Altair). Bill and Paul moved to New Mexico to be close to MITS computer and they named their new partnership Microsoft.
In 1980 IBM contracted Microsoft to write the language for its new personal computers. In 1981 the company was incorporated into Microsoft Inc., and ended its first year with 128 employee and 16 million dollars in revenue (Microsoft Company History, 2008).
As at 2010 Microsoft profit was 6.7 billion dollars with 93 thousand employees.
Software bundling by Microsoft
May 1988 the united state department of justice took Microsoft to court over the abuse of its monopoly power on operation systems for personal computers. Microsoft was bundling its flagship Internet explorer software with its Microsoft windows operating system. This gave Microsoft the advantage in browsers because all Microsoft windows user had a copy of Microsoft explorer. The other web browsers (Firefox, Netscape navigator or opera) if free were slow to download or had to be purchased in a store.
Bundling is forced on any Microsoft windows user and Microsoft made sure we did not have a choice in whether or not we want to user Internet explorer. Removing Internet