Word: antitrusters
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Unless that happens, there's a lot more bad news yet to come Gates' way. Jackson still has to issue conclusions of law--expected early next year--in which he'll use these facts to decide if Microsoft used its monopoly power to violate the antitrust laws. Assuming he says yea--a near certainty considering Friday's findings--he can impose a remedy as far-reaching as the total dismemberment of the Gates empire. And more potential bad news: these findings of fact could be used by a host of competitors to bring their own civil antitrust actions against Microsoft...
...Friday when an Antitrust Division lawyer called from the courthouse, a hot-off-the-presses copy of the Microsoft decision in his hands. "What does it say?" asked an eager Joel Klein, head of the division, who was waiting in his conference room with the government's trial team. "I'm on page 16," replied the lawyer who was speed-reading his way through, "and it says they're a monopolist!" "Great!" said Klein. "Keep reading...
...actually hard to imagine how, for Microsoft, it could have come out any worse. The ruling carefully lays out the factual basis for the major antitrust violations that seem certain to follow. And it paints an exceedingly dark portrait of one of America's most admired companies. The Microsoft of Judge Jackson's narrative is a deep-pocketed bully that uses "its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm" companies that presume to compete with it. And it presents Gates as a law-flouting monopolist who makes a "threat" to one rival considering getting into the software market...
What do these thousands of facts add up to? More than likely an architectural blueprint for finding that Microsoft did indeed willfully and repeatedly violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. In their Friday-night spinathon, Microsoft's legal experts hastened to point out that this conclusion is not a certainty. In fact, the judge could still find that the mountains of incriminating evidence he laid out don't support a legal ruling against Microsoft...
...District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson delivered a blow to the Microsoft Corporation in the form of a 207-page finding of fact. Jackson concluded that since the early '90s, Microsoft has stifled innovation, reduced competition and hurt consumers. Although not a final verdict in the nearly year-long antitrust case filed by the U.S. government--that will be delivered within a few weeks unless the parties negotiate a settlement--the findings clearly side with the government by declaring Microsoft a monopoly in the operating systems market and rebuking all of Microsoft's claims to the contrary...