We've really grown to dislike seeing the words "Microsoft" and "settlement" in the same sentence, mostly because it's never something good like "Microsoft has been banished from the country and exiled to a settlement on the small island nation of the Republic of Maldives." (Not that we'd particularly wish such a nasty fate upon the fine people of Maldives, but, well, it's you or us, fellas. Sorry.)

No, it's pretty much always something like Microsoft getting away with a slap on the wrist for having stabbed an assortment of nuns and babies. (Not literally, of course. Yet. We think.) This latest instance of the "Microsoft Settlement Bad News Syndrome," pointed out by faithful viewer Snipe and reported by MacMinute, has Microsoft settling a private antitrust suit with AOL's Netscape division-- you remember that whole "browser war" thing, right?-- by paying the company $750 million. Now, granted, that's not exactly chump change, but neither is it a crippling expense to a company the hulking size of the Redmond Behemoth.

But that's not the bad news. The bad news is that the settlement also provides a "new royalty-free, seven-year license of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player to AOL," which strongly implies that for the next seven years, the eleventy-billion AOL subscribers scattered across the face of the planet will form the cornerstone of Microsoft's monopoly on web browsers and, eventually, media players. It sure sounds to us like Windows Media Player's free incorporation into the AOL client software pretty much nails the coffin lid shut on those reports that AOL was considering using the iTunes Music Store as its online music service. Indeed, AOL and Microsoft reportedly announced that they'd "work to broaden consumer access to high-quality digital content, in such areas as online music services offering single downloads and/or monthly subscriptions."

As for AOL negotiating for a seven-year license for IE when it kindasorta owns a little browser called "Netscape," well, maybe it's just us being paranoid or something, but doesn't that sound a little like AOL getting ready to pull the plug on its Netscape division? Even if it doesn't, seven more years of AOL's enormohuge customer base using Microsoft's browser effectively cements that little monopoly, and the iTunes Music Store is going to have an uphill fight ahead of it, too. Microsoft and settlements; nothing good ever comes of them.