Microsoft barely got a slap on the wrist from the DoJ in the end. Market competition from Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome, along with industry and cultural support for browser standards, was the ultimate remedy, and that would have happened with or without the DoJ. The original suit was brought by Netscape who were charging $40 for a browser license at the time. It was a dead end business model and MS was ultimately right when they argued in the nineties that browser tech was so fundamental it needed to be integrated into the OS.

I love iMessage because it has a good feature set for family group chats (photo sharing is stellar), but I’m also happy with all the innovation, choice, and competition on features and governance provided by Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, et al, each of which have their own strengths and have to respond to improvements by the others. The worst thing that could happen to innovation is if we were all using the same iMessage protocol forced into the stewardship of a DoJ mandated standards body.

I really can’t understand the obsession with default SMS functionality. Other than 2FA codes or setting up Uber on a new phone who gets an SMS more than once a month?