And it's not just about the fact that IE is bundled with Windows... it's mainly about forcing IE to be "more standard compliant" which some think is not necessarily a very good idea (regarding to their complaints).
As I said, if you are a rich company, you can do so anyway. It doesn't matter where your money come from. For example, Google is a rich company which major profit come from advertising. And they are also in a "very comfortable position to keep trying and doesn't need to make a profit" for their Google Talk program.
No, it's not. Being rich is different from being monopoly. It does not really matter whether the money comes from monopoly or not. "Abusing money" is different from "abusing monopoly."
Apple is also worse in many respects, but let's face it. If you're working in technology, you can pretty much avoid dealing with Intel, IBM, Apple, Dell, HP or anyone else without too much effort. But aside from a few niche positions, sooner or later you're going to be up to your elbows in Microsoft
Not necessarily. Microsoft is, after all, a software company. If you are a hardware manufacturer you probably won't cross lines with Microsoft. Even software companies do not necessarily compete with Microsoft. Face it, most companies which competed with Microsoft and failed are those whose products do not have enough entry barrier to keep competitions from destroying them. A counter example is Photoshop... even with MS Paint bundled in Windows for ages, Adobe seems to be doing quite well.
Let's go back to the original topic: bundling. Bundling is actually an acceptable behavior for many industries, and in some cases it's very hard to draw a line. For example, should an OS comes with a web browser? I think a modern OS should come with a web browser. It's probably one of the most used application in an OS anyway. It's very difficult to define whether an application is "essential" or not. Is a text editor essential? It's not part of an OS kernel. But many (if not all) OS have a built-in text editor. Another example is game consoles. All next generation game consoles have web browser built-in. In a few years Wii may become the dominant game console and the only web browser on Wii is Opera. Is that anti-competitive? Maybe Microsoft should file a complaint that Nintendo should provide a Wii with IE or Firefox bundled?
The problem with Microsoft is, well, it's a monopoly. Bundling a web browser in Windows means that it's probably will become the most used web browser in that platform (Safari enjoys a similar benefit on Mac OS X). However, earlier complaints requesting Microsoft to unbundle IE was not successful, because Microsoft claimed that IE is "an essential part of the OS." Whether it's true or not is not important. Requiring Microsoft to sell a special "IE-free" Windows will not help anyone, as evidenced in the "Media Player-free Windows."
Now Microsoft already provided a method to change the default browser, and most OEM vendors make their own Windows images for their machines. Therefore, I think it's quite enough if other companies like Opera want, they can find an OEM to put their browser in their Windows image and make it default browser. I don't think there's any problem with this. Of course, the major problem here is, most OEM are not going to do this if there's no apparent profit. But that's a problem companies like Opera have to solve, not Microsoft. For example, they can provide added value in their software. Actually there are many opportunities regarding IE's current situation: IE is perceived as insecure by many, and it's not the web browser with the best features.
