Microsoft's anti-trust problems were not primarily about Netscape. If that's all it had been it would have been a trivial resolution.
They were about vendor abuse, vendor contracts. Which is one of the key ways Microsoft tried to maintain its power over the tech industry.
And of course as another person noted, Netscape was not in any manner blocked off of Windows. Netscape lost because it was charging for a browser while IE was free and usually installed by default. Then Netscape compounded the disaster by producing a couple of particularly terrible browser versions in a row while IE kept improving.
There was no scenario where a $49 browser was going to win regardless.
It's funny that Microsoft had to fight so hard when they could have just developed an operating system from the start, like iOS, that limited installations to whatever they pre-approved. It's always harder to take something away than never give it as an option in the first place.
They were about vendor abuse, vendor contracts. Which is one of the key ways Microsoft tried to maintain its power over the tech industry.
And of course as another person noted, Netscape was not in any manner blocked off of Windows. Netscape lost because it was charging for a browser while IE was free and usually installed by default. Then Netscape compounded the disaster by producing a couple of particularly terrible browser versions in a row while IE kept improving.
There was no scenario where a $49 browser was going to win regardless.