Word: intuit
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...Gates is feeling a little cranky these days, he has good reason. The Justice Department just derailed his $2 billion bid to acquire Intuit and its popular Quicken electronic-checkbook program, a deal that would have helped realize Microsoft's ambition to make money from almost every commercial transaction in cyberspace. Another team of government lawyers is snooping around asking questions about Microsoft Network, the new online service he plans to launch in August. And an antitrust suit that has been hanging over his head for nearly five years -- and which he thought he had settled last summer...
After Sporkin's ruling, things seemed to turn sour for Microsoft. In late April the Justice Department's antitrust division sued to prevent the company from consummating the merger with Intuit, a deal that would have been the biggest acquisition in software history. Microsoft was scheduled to fight the suit in court on June 26, but two weeks ago, the company announced that it was dropping the merger, perhaps hoping it would get the government off its back. It may be too late for that. Bingaman says her department has become a kind of "Microsoft complaint center," and her staff...
...such a thing would not be out of character. In a complaint filed in April as part of the Intuit suit, the Justice Department quoted a memo, directed to Gates, in which a Microsoft vice president told how he had tried to pressure Intuit chairman Scott Cook into accepting a $1 billion buyout offer by hinting that Microsoft might spend the money attacking Intuit in the marketplace. "I tried to tell him how much we could do with $1 billion," the V.P. wrote. "I tried to be nonthreatening, but let him know we would do something aggressively...
...provide the digital dial tone for the information superhighway. Look the other way while Microsoft gobbles up cable and telephone companies so it can have a direct information pipeline into every home. Ignore it when Gates colonizes Hollywood and starts running the film and TV industry. Give him Intuit. And throw in the banks...
BILL GATES Microsoft's merger with Intuit hits an antitrust snag