I take it you think Brad Silverberg was wrong about his analysis of the effect of behavior like this on consumers? It’s not like he was in a position to know what he was talking about, eh?
The difference between the forced inclusion of a browser and forced inclusion of Network Load Balancing is that Network Load Balancing by its very nature must work closely with the OS (I would guess a good part of it is implemented within the OS kernel itself) and thus it is not unreasonable to have it included with the OS. There is no reason (no competitive reason, that is) for the browser to be so intimately tied to the OS.
I understand your point, but obviously disagree. No monopolist has a right to use its monopoly in one market to acquire a monopoly in another.