Word: breakups
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...proposal. Microsoft will want "months and months" of additional hearings in front of Jackson, who ruled on April 3 that the company had illegally and repeatedly used its monopoly power to stifle innovation. A final decision by Jackson might not come until the end of summer. Even then, any breakup that the judge might call for would be on hold until the appeals process is done. That's why Klein and the states want Jackson's ruling to include immediate restrictions on Microsoft's conduct, including a measure that would bar it from retaliating against computer makers that load rivals...
...every one said, "Split the company in two," and then they all began to work on finalizing the details. "People have been in here night in and night out for the past several weeks," Klein says. "There are still pizza boxes in the hallways." The result was a breakup proposal that Justice then shopped to the mostly receptive states...
...would a breakup prevent future Netscapes--whose browser Microsoft ran over--from being illegally squashed? "It's a gamble," says lawyer and economist Robert Litan, of the Brookings Institution, who once worked for the Justice Department's antitrust division. Litan, who believes the Feds should go even further, joined three fellow economists in a separate brief that called for Microsoft to be split into three competing pieces. The trouble with Klein's remedy, Litan argues, is that where once there was one monopoly there now could be two--the applications and Windows sides--with the possibility that they will find...
From Microsoft's perspective, no breakup is even remotely thinkable. Gates says it's functionally impossible to split the operating system from the applications side. Why? They're interdependent, he insists, and enhance each other. Microsofties point out that consumers, understandably, love that. Moreover, says Gates, "Microsoft could never have developed Windows under these rules." Indeed, by any measure, breaking up is hard...
Funny what the threat of a government-sponsored breakup will do to whet a company's appetite for compromise. According to Sunday?s Washington Post, Microsoft has drafted a plan designed to address many of the primary charges brought by the government's antitrust case, while keeping the company whole. If the counteroffer is accepted, its provisions would essentially rewrite the company's disclosure and marketing policies. Among the terms of the offer: Consumers would be able to purchase PCs with Windows operating systems and without Internet Explorer; the company would not require computer makers to promote Microsoft products over...