I'm trying to decide if you are being ironic or not. If you are, it isn't clear at all. If you aren't, your argument makes zero sense whatsoever. You don't have a monopoly "over products"; you have a monopoly over markets.
There are more Android phones than iPhones. Which market do you think Apple has a monopoly over? They have a quarter or something of the US smart phone market and less world wide.
At the very least, it was a tremendous drain on their public image and wallet. Don't underestimate these effects, and if you're young you should read a bit of history to have a sense of Microsoft's trajectory and goals at the time. You should at least know what the Halloween Documents are.
Thanks, I am aware of the history. My point, which you've confirmed, is that nobody actually knows what the penalties are, because they were so light or non-existent.
You could argue that it scared Microsoft enough to keep their head down for a while because there was a lot of talk about forcibly splitting Microsoft.
The strain on their image and wallet was largely self-inflicted. They were caught with their hand in the cookie jar and they were saying "we've done nothing wrong, we know not of the cookie of which you speak".
Ultimately they didn't need to fight as hard as they did (appealing, using delaying tactics to drag it out, pissing in the European's porridge etc), but in the end all they got the equivalent of a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket.
Why do the specific findings of damages and penalties matter here? There was more than one case and they intertwined and resolved in not-so-obvious ways. I'd say it's naive or simplistic to ask "What exactly was the penalty?" the same way it would be to ask about the end result of IBM's antitrust case (13yrs, dropped). Does that mean there weren't any penalties?
One of Microsoft's results was that they were found guilty of monopolistic practices and that will never go away, even though the larger case wound up being settled (as is standard when a rich and/or powerful defendant is going to be found guilty). That their hand was in the cookie jar is a fact of public record.
While many decry the settlement itself, it's also important to look to history for the circumstances of the agreement: it was hashed out in the weeks following the 9-11 attacks. You take your eye off the ball and some scumbag is going to take it, in this case Microsoft and the Bush DOJ workers shaping the agreement.
