Just reading what you have had to deal with is giving me a migraine =/ I'm sorry man. I sure do miss Windows 7 though... 10 is growing on me quickly, though. I just hope they are able to iron out all of these issues some seem to be having. 

This discussion is talking about consumers upgrading their PCs. Microsoft may have a "monopoly" in that subset of the market, but it's hardly indicative of the general population.

The consumer PC market has been on a downward trend over the past few years, and one of the few growth companies in the market is Apple, offering an alternative product to Microsoft. Mac OS, Android, and iOS are all valid and strong competitors against MS in the consumer market.

Where Microsoft still gets a bulk of their business is through the education and enterprise industries. Where this discussion is irrelevant, anyways, as the end-users rarely get any kind of say over the default browser, as it's usually a policy set by the organisation's IT department. And they certainly don't care about a tickbox that comes up during the upgrade process.

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The truth of the matter is, Microsoft DID have a monopoly in the consumer PC market for many years. And, as a result, progress slowed down for a while.  As much as certain users in the thread would like to thank the EU or the US anti-trust cases for bringing down the MS monopoly, that simply doesn't hold up as true when you look at what actually happened. Ultimately, it was all irrelevant as the market just leap-frogged Microsoft's monopoly and created a whole new world where Microsoft is, frankly, unable to compete effectively.

Well, the world has changed a bit since 2004. Back then Windows PCs absolutely dominated devices that allowed proper internet access.

With the rise of smart phones and tablets (and Chromebooks and better console browsers) you don't need a PC anymore to use the internet. Windows is still dominating PCs, but it's not dominating internet access anymore.

A new antitrust case against Microsoft for making Edge the standard browser on Windows 10 would be much harder to make when Apple is allowed to make Safari the standard browser on a billion of their devices (Macs, iPhones, iPads) and Samsung is allowed to choose their own standard browser for their Andoid devices (also over a billion) and Google is pushing for Chrome as standard browser on Android (several billion devices):

That is your opinion. Linux is used quite ubiquitously for servers. The internet wouldn't be what it is without Linux. Mac OS has its 9% niche who like it. Everyone else goes with various types of Windows because it is a standard. 

Most people don't need home PCs either. Smartphones and tablets have been replacing them for most purposes. Only people in academic/computing fields need a PC of some kind, and they have a variety of options to choose for their specific purpose. 

Also the issues with monopolies are that they allow prices to rise arbitrary (versus competitive markets where businesses are price-takers.) Considering that Microsoft's software is getting cheaper/free as the years go on, it is evidence that they aren't necessarily enacting the dangers of a monopoly, mostly because they have competition outside the home PC sphere. 

Good i use only chrome

yes, the EU should sue those companys too

For whether something is or is not a monopoly I look to regulator's interpretations, not textbooks. Microsoft has already been subject to penalties over its effective market control. Intel was also charged with monopoly abuse over CPUs, despite only having 2/3 of the market and with AMD's offerings being a drop-in replacement (Linux and Mac are in no way drop-in replacements for Windows).

For example, I cannot "always" use Linux or Mac because the computer software I require to make a living is not available for them, and the computer hardware I require (high performance 3D graphics cards) do not function correctly on them. The company I work for, and every other company in the area, has a signed exclusivity agreement and blanket license with MS and no one else. Mac/Linux is not an option for any of them. They don't have 100% control, but they have enough control to compel manufacturers to only sell their software on new PCs and for new software, especially commercial/business software, to be only written for their platform.

We are still talking about default browsers, aren't we? And in this area Microsoft has no dominating position anymore (they had this position until 2 years ago)... not with the Internet Explorer, not with Edge and not with IE + Edge together. Chrome is now the most popular browser by far.

So I don't see any problems with setting up Microsoft Edge as default browser for Windows 10 (which can be changed with a few clicks by the way).

Where do these regulators get their "interpretations?" 

Oligopolies can control markets as well. Microsoft doesn't have to have a monopoly to have market power. 

At the end of the day it gets silly, when a group of a few hundred/thousand people have arbitrary power to define terms and institute de-facto legislation. 

Anti-monopoly laws get especially silly when they are in their "anti-competitive" mode, when regulators punish companies for actually making their products better or their prices lower because it is seen as "anti-competitive" when in fact that is the purpose of competition - so that companies who make their products better get an advantage. 

its not about the browser, its about the OS...

they are abusing their market power in the OS space to push their browser, and thats against anti trust laws...