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a. The Internet Explorer Access Kit Agreements

248. In September 1996, Microsoft announced the availability of the "Internet Explorer Access Kit," or "IEAK." By simply accessing the correct page on Microsoft's Web site and clicking on a box to indicate agreement with the license terms, any IAP could download the IEAK, which included a copy of Internet Explorer. With their technical knowledge, sophisticated equipment, and high-bandwidth connections, IAPs found it very convenient to download Internet Explorer and the IEAK from Microsoft's Web site.

249. Using the IEAK, an IAP could create a distinctive identity for its service in as little as a few hours by customizing the title bar, icon, start and search pages, and "favorites" in Internet Explorer. The IEAK also made the installation process easy for IAPs. With the IEAK, IAPs could avoid piecemeal installation of various programs and instead create an automated, comprehensive installation package in which all settings and options were pre-configured. In addition to ease of customization and installation, the IEAK enabled each IAP to preset the default home page so that customers would be taken to the IAP's Web site whenever they logged onto the Internet. This was important to IAPs because setting the user's home page to the IAP's Web site gave the IAPs advertising and promotional opportunities. Netscape, by contrast, refused to allow its IAP licensees to move Navigator's home page from Netscape's NetCenter portal site.

250. Many IAPs would have paid for the right to distribute Internet Explorer. Indeed, Netscape was charging IAPs between fifteen and twenty dollars per copy of Navigator they distributed. Because of the features and convenience it offered, the IEAK significantly increased the price that IAPs would have been willing to pay. Nevertheless, Microsoft licensed the IEAK, including Internet Explorer, to IAPs at no charge. At the time Microsoft released the IEAK, Netscape did not offer IAPs an analogous tool. Although Netscape eventually followed Microsoft's lead by introducing a tool kit similar to the IEAK known as Mission Control, that kit was not made available to IAPs until June 1997 -- a full nine months after the release of the IEAK. Whereas IAPs could obtain the IEAK for free, Netscape initially charged $1,995 for each copy of Mission Control.

251. Approximately 2,500 IAPs executed an electronic copy of a license agreement for the IEAK. Included in that number were the eighty IAPs that together accounted for ninety-five percent of all Internet access subscribers in the United States. The IAPs that executed an IEAK license agreement agreed to make Internet Explorer their "preferred" browsing software. The term "preferred" was not defined in the license, and Microsoft did not investigate the extent to which Internet Explorer was in fact enjoying "preferred" status in the client software of its IEAK licensees. In fact, other than to provide information and respond to technical questions, Microsoft made no effort to maintain regular direct contact with the vast majority of the IAPs that had executed licenses.

252. Whether or not IEAK licensees actually gave Internet Explorer preferred status, Microsoft's decision to license Internet Explorer and the IEAK to IAPs at no charge beguiled many small ISPs that otherwise would not have done so into distributing Internet Explorer to their subscribers. By giving up the opportunity to charge for Internet Explorer, and also by developing the IEAK at substantial cost and offering it at no charge, Microsoft thus increased the flow of Internet Explorer through the crucial IAP channel.