MSFT Performance Since Antitrust

Even though the charges are a little less severe, the thought of the Justice Department bringing anti-competitive charges against the county's largest technology company brings 1998 to mind, when the Clinton DOJ sued MSFT for antitrust.  Below is a long term chart of MSFT.  The blue dot is May of 1998 when the charges were first filed against the company.

For MSFT the charges were a major turning point.  There are those who will argue that Gates was never the same after the lawsuit because he lost his sense of what was an aggressive business practice and what was crossing the line.  Thanks in part to bubble valuations, the stock has only risen 42% in 14 years, or about 2.5% per year.  There are major differences between the MSFT charges and the AAPL charges of course.  The MSFT charges were related to the company's flagship product--ebooks mean a lot less to Apple than Windows/Internet Explorer did to MSFT.