For example, Microsoft copying Netscape's web browser and using its dominance of operating system distribution to win, or Google copying Overture's pay per click model and using its existing dominance in search to sell ads.
The 222-page paper accused Microsoft, among other things, of using its dominance in operating systems to force PC makers to take Microsoft's browser.
Browsers represented a revolutionary new technology for finding data stored on the Internet and desktop hard drives, threatening Microsoft's dominance in operating systems and graphical user interfaces.
If this argument holds up, it will be harder for the commission to prove that Microsoft has leveraged its dominance of operating PC software into the market for server software.
The European Commission went on the offensive today in its antitrust case against Microsoft, saying in a preliminary ruling that the company continues to abuse its dominance in operating systems.
Microsoft and European regulators had clashed for almost a decade in the first antitrust case, as the software maker tried to rebuff charges of abusing its dominance in operating systems to aid its media players and servers.
While Microsoft's desire for new frontiers appears to be unabated, several longtime industry executives warned that even with its dominance of operating systems and office software, the company was bumping up against real limits.
In 2007, the court rejected an appeal by Microsoft of a commission finding that the software maker had abused its dominance in operating systems to support its media player and servers.
This is a stance the firm itself has long maintained much to the irritation of other software producers, which see Microsoft's dominance in operating systems as a fact of life.
This, thought the commission, might be an abuse of its dominance in operating systems: buy a PC, and unless you took the trouble of choosing otherwise, you would browse the web through Explorer.In December that year Microsoft promised the watchdog that until 2014 it would provide a "choice screen", asking European Windows users whether they wanted to install another browser.
