To reassure South Korean customers, the government created its own system to authenticate the identities of online buyers. To make purchases, shoppers had to supply their names and social security numbers and apply for government-issued “digital certificates,” which they could present to sellers as proof of ID. The whole process took just a few clicks.

But the back-and-forth was technologically complicated, and it came with a catch: It required a piece of additional software, or “plugin,” known as ActiveX — which is also made by Microsoft and worked in tandem only with Internet Explorer.

I blame Microsoft.