Word: kleine
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...came down, unsurprisingly, to the browser. Microsoft's statement Saturday confirmed that Gates was willing to modify his licensing agreements with computer manufacturers to let them decide which products and services they could feature on their own machines. But Klein wasn't interested in settling for another minor pact reminiscent of his predecessor Anne Bingaman's infamous 1994 consent decree, now widely derided as a sellout that only postponed the day of reckoning. The deal, struck in 1994 and ratified in '95, granted Microsoft the right to sell "integrated" products--i.e., software like Windows that combines more functions than...
...problems inherent in the wording of the consent decree became painfully apparent when Klein finally went after Gates last fall. For Klein, the intent of Microsoft's harsh licensing deals--its strong-arming of Compaq, for instance--was clearly to drive up the market share of Microsoft's Explorer at the expense of front runner Navigator's. Thus, he felt, those deals constituted tying. No, they don't, Gates shot back; Explorer is as much an integrated part of the operating system as type fonts or file-system managers. Months later, the battle is still being waged in appeals court...
...Klein's proposed solution appears to be aimed at separating Microsoft's operating system from its applications. In fact, the details of the talks that began emerging early Saturday evening made it clear Klein was looking for concessions that Microsoft was unlikely ever to grant. One demand, according to Microsoft, was that the company hide the Windows opening screen and let anyone in the software industry--except Microsoft--compete to offer a new one to PC makers. Another suggested that Microsoft either remove or turn off the Explorer browser that is even more thoroughly knit into Windows 98 than...
Justice says these were just suggestions, not demands. Regardless, Bill Gates wanted no part of them. Right or wrong, Joel Klein's vision for Microsoft's future violates the principles upon which Gates' entire life's work has been based. If Justice and the states win what now appears to be their inevitable days in court, Microsoft will argue, the result would be a world in which federal judges determine which new software can be legally incorporated into new operating systems--highly technical issues at the heart of Microsoft's, and Silicon Valley's, business. What's more, the booming...
...case now goes to court, which, one suspects, was where Klein expected to end up all along. Bill Gates showed last week that he's too smart to cause storm clouds over relative trivia. But as anyone even remotely conversant with the Microsoft chairman's long and combative career well knows, he's also too tough to mortgage his company's future for blue skies today...