The European Union’s uber-bureaucracy spent most of the last decade prosecuting Microsoft for monopoly abuse. While the EU could have looked to the US’s decade of Microsoft prosecution to see how pointless regulating the swift moving technology industry is, the feisty Europeans had to make their point. The EU’s complaint settled on the fact that Microsoft bundles its web browser, IE, with every copy of Windows. Never mind that every other operating system comes with a web browser too, the EU reckoned that because of Windows’ popularity, Microsoft was abusing its power by forcing IE on consumers. The EU crusade against Microsoft is yet another tale of the government waging a war against problems that do not exist and about which nobody cares.

Of course web browsers are not hard to come by. Anyone with an internet connection can download a free browser such as FireFox, Chrome, or Safari. Indeed many people do; about 31% of internet traffic comes from FireFox browsers. All that is not good enough, said the EU, which declared that Microsoft was cheating consumers by giving them a free copy of IE with each copy of Windows. Microsoft objected, stating the obvious that IE was free and available for other platforms besides Windows. The EU persisted, ultimately fining Microsoft $1.35bln for the hideous crime of forcing consumers to download their own copies of FireFox. The EU argued that by starting consumers off with IE, they were unlikely to try other browsers and were thereby disadvantaged.

The billion Euro fine slowly got Microsoft’s attention. Initially Microsoft planned to sell a special ‘E’ version of Windows that had no browser; the obvious problem being that one needs a browser to download another browser. The EU declared that this approach was illegal – essentially regulating what Microsoft had to sell in the wake of regulating what Microsoft could not sell. Microsoft, now in full retreat, created a program that allowed consumers to choose from a number of popular browsers. Still not good enough, for the list was not randomly generated – consumers were so helpless they would choose the first browser on the list. Microsoft randomized the list, finally satisfying the EU do-gooders. The case was closed.

What did Europe gain by hounding Microsoft for nearly a decade, fining it a billion Euros, and forcing consumers to download a browser before they could start using the internet? Were people freer to choose a different browser? Surprise, Engadget reported this week that the proportion of Europeans using IE, Firefox, and the other popular browsers did not change at all. Bundling IE with Windows had nothing to do with consumers’ browser choice.

Could it be that consumers were perfectly capable of choosing their own browsers all along? Could it be that 7 out of 10 internet users actually prefer IE? Could it be that consumers don’t need to be protected from IE when they can download competing products for free? Yes indeed, consumers are not helpless morons after all; they do not need the government to protect them from evil Microsoft and its free software.

Considering what a pile of nonsense the whole EU case was from the start, Microsoft probably should not have fought the EU for so long. Surely Microsoft’s shareholders could have used the money better than the EU. Still, it is hard to say what possessed the EU to channel Captain Ahab in the first place. Perhaps, like many bureaucrats, Microsoft’s tormenters were sadistic egotists. Surely the EU now realizes that consumers are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, especially when they have free and readily available alternatives from which to choose. Nope, it turns out; the EU just launched an investigation into Google’s search engine dominance.