Thanks to the rise of high-speed Internet, web-based solutions and cloud computing in general, it doesn’t really matter what OS you use - Facebook and Gmail don’t care if you’re accessing them from Windows, OS X or Linux.

Microsoft Windows operating systems still dominate the PC OS market, but PC OSes are less important than they’ve ever been before, diminishing Microsoft’s ability to use Windows’ market share to make life harder for its rivals. These days, it’s harder to see Microsoft as the big monopolist bully Judge Jackson once described. Microsoft would settle the case with the Department of Justice in November of 2001 by agreeing to make it easier for Microsoft’s competitors to get their software more closely integrated with the Windows operating system - a tough pill for Microsoft to swallow, but hardly on the same level as a forced breakup. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected Jackson’s remedy and accused him of unethical conduct after it was revealed he had private conversations with reporters about the trial while it was still ongoing. So why aren’t there two Microsofts today? In 2000, Judge Jackson took the harsher path, decreeing that Microsoft should be split into two halves, one dedicated to Windows and the other to everything else Microsoft. “The gamut of possible outcomes runs from a mild go-forth-and-sin-no-more to the truly Draconian stuff: forcing Microsoft to share its Windows source code with its competitors or carving up the company into the so-called Baby Bills.” (“Baby Bills” was a clever riff on the “Baby Bells” born of the 1982 breakup of the Bell telephone system.) “Assuming he says yea –a near certainty considering Friday’s findings–he can impose a remedy as far-reaching as the total dismemberment of the Gates empire,” TIME wrote in 1999. Jackson’s conclusions and remedy wouldn’t come until April and June of the next year, respectively, after Gates had already stepped down as CEO and transitioned into the newly created role of “chief software architect.” But Jackson wasn’t done yet - the declaration that Microsoft was a monopolist was only the first half of his decision.

15, 1999 cover story on Jackson’s decision. “It’s actually hard to imagine how, for Microsoft, it could have come out any worse,” TIME wrote in a Nov.

Monopoly here and now app shuts off