iambic9 - 8:50 am on Dec 17, 2009 (gmt 0)

A large part of the original issue was that Microsoft was using their position in the market to force OEMs to not bundle competing browsers, this is not the same as Apple bundling their browser with their OS. This is also why the tire / steering wheel analogy doesn't hold up – Bridgestone (for example) has not been accused of using their position to threaten car manufacturers into not using Goodyear tires.

Additionally Microsoft embedded their browser particularly deep within the OS making it near impossible to remove without breaking parts of the OS itself, that didn't go unnoticed by the EU.

It's not simply a case that end users were / are not offered a choice of browser, instead Microsoft went a long way to make sure end users had a harder time making a choice.