Yet Microsoft has had to pay hefty damages to rivals and remains under court supervision. One issue before the court is a complaint from rival Google, which ironically is seen by some analysts as the new dominant force in the tech sector.

After years of litigation, Microsoft agreed to a settlement calling for court supervision, and to disclose more technical information to its rivals. The deal also barred anti-competitive agreements on Microsoft products.

The 2002 US settlement did not require Microsoft to pay a fine, but the finding that it abused its monopoly position in the software market opened it to private lawsuits, and the Redmond, Washington, firm paid over four billion dollars in settlements.

Microsoft's Windows operating system is still used for some 92 percent of personal computers worldwide, about the same percentage as in 1993.

But Microsoft argues that it remains in a tough battle for market share in new technologies like mobile devices, and faces the juggernauts of Google and Yahoo in key areas such as Internet search and advertising.

The anti-competition case for Microsoft began in 1990 when the Justice Department opened its first case against the group over its dominance of PC operating systems. That was settled in 1994 with Microsoft agreeing to end a number of contested business practices.

The case was effectively reopened in 1997 when US authorities contended Microsoft, by incorporating its Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system for the first time, was trying to crush competition from Netscape, a rising star of the early Internet.

A formal complaint was filed in 1998 by the Department of Justice, joined by a number of US states.

While the case was pending, Microsoft won the "browser war" and Netscape was sold to AOL, which later became part of Time Warner.

A shock ruling on April 3, 2000 by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found Microsoft guilty of antitrust violations and ordered the company be broken up into two entities, one for operating systems and a separate firm for other software.

But a year later, a federal appeals court reversed Jackson's order and removed him from the case, although it let stand the finding that Microsoft acted as an illegal monopoly.

The case was concluded with a settlement between Microsoft and the Justice Department in November 2001, and was approved by a federal judge a year later.

The settlement imposed no financial penalty, but it forced billionaire Bill Gates's software giant to disclose more technical information and barred anti-competitive agreements on Microsoft products.

In private lawsuits stemming from the case, Microsoft paid 1.6 billion dollars to Sun Microsystems, 750 million to AOL Time Warner and 761 million to RealNetworks, among the companies who alleged they were hurt by Microsoft's conduct.

Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly continues to supervise the settlement, which originally was for five years. Microsoft agreed to extend certain provisions through 2009, although some states have asked for the supervision to continue into 2012.

One issue before the court, ironically, stems from a claim from Google that Microsoft's desktop search feature in its new Windows Vista operating system may harm a competing service from Google.

related report
Reverse outsourcing takes off as rising costs hit Indian IT firms
Indian IT firms that thrived on the outsourcing boom in the West are themselves headed offshore, from Malaysia to Mexico, to escape the double sting of surging salaries and a rising rupee.

Tata Consultancy, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and smaller companies are stepping up acquisitions and opening more facilities closer to US and European clients to cut costs -- the reason why work was farmed out to India in the first place.

Salaries of software professionals rose 18.7 percent in 2007, a survey showed Tuesday, while the rupee has gained almost 10 percent this year to near 10-year highs against the dollar.

That's eroding the cost advantage once enjoyed by the 50 billion dollar information technology industry, which bills two-thirds of sales in dollars but whose expenses are almost all incurred in rupees.

IT firms are "off-shoring" work to time zones and locations nearer their clients in a reversal of the trend that made Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, the favourite back-office of the world's biggest companies.

Bangalore also gave the English language a new slang verb: being "bangalored" in the US meant a person had lost his job because it had been handed to an IT company in India that would do it for a fraction of the cost.

The term looks set to lose its pejorative punch as the same IT industry, which employs 1.63 million people at home, creates and sustains thousands of jobs abroad.

This week Wipro opened a facility in the Mexican city of Monterrey to service American and European clients and Satyam launched a software centre in MSC Malaysia, a government-designated high-tech zone.

"In the past, we viewed off-shoring as India-centric, but we do not do it any more," said Satyam founder B. Ramalinga Raju, who on Monday opened the centre to support business in the US, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

"We look at off-shoring as delivering through high-quality workforce in lower-cost countries," he said.

Hyderabad-based Satyam has hired 300 mostly-Malaysian IT engineers to man the facility, whose workforce will rise to 2,000 in four years to cater to clients such as GlaxoSmithKline, one of its top 10 customers.

Malaysia was chosen because of its "competitive cost environment," said Raju, whose company is distributing work to locations where "it makes the most business sense."

Wipro will add to the 100 employees it hired in Mexico and invest in other lower-cost locations, said chairman Azim Premji, who in August paid 600 million dollars to buy US-based outsourcing firm Infocrossing to serve American clients.

Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy, India's top software maker, opened a centre in the Mexican city of Guadalajara with 500 employees and said it will employ "thousands more" in the next five years.

Mexico shares a similar time zone with and is within five hours flying distance from anywhere in the US, enabling TCS to provide "nearshore services" to clients, the company said.

Infosys Technologies opened a 400-person facility in the Czech Republic to service European clients and purchased the service centres of Royal Philips in Poland and Thailand besides India. It's also weighing potential acquisitions.

At home, wage bills are rising as Indian firms compete with multinationals to hire and keep scarce software talent.

The IT industry's average annual salary rose 11 percent this year to 620,000 rupees (15,320 dollars), said a survey by the market-research firm IDC India for Dataquest magazine, a considerable amount in a country where the per capita income is less than 900 dollars.

"Indian tech companies must find a way out of this ever increasing wage rise as rupee appreciation squeezes their margins further," said the industry survey.

The rupee is rising on inflows of billions of dollars into an economy growing nine percent a year.

But costs alone are not driving the "dispersal of the IT industry around the globe," said Kiran Karnik, president of the industry grouping National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom.

"Cost optimization is just one reason," he said. "Proximity to clients is also important, both geographically and culturally. If you want to serve clients in the US or Spanish-speaking Latin America, it makes sense to be in Mexico."