Word: microsoft
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even though the Justice Department?s trustbusters decided Thursday to abandon their effort to break up Microsoft in court, drop its "bundling" investigations and open its arms to a case-closing settlement, the Redmond software giant?s troubles are not immediately over...
...feds were careful to point out that since an appellate court has signed off on their monopolist charge, the government "believes it has established a basis for relief that would end Microsoft's unlawful conduct, prevent its recurrence and open the operating-systems market to competition." Translation: The lawyers will be watching for signs that the boys from Redmond are abusing their power - and ready to pounce with new lawsuits...
...Wall Street, upon hearing the pro-business news, promptly figured out that even a liberated Microsoft has to make its money doing business in today?s tech sector, and business in today?s tech sector is still lousy. Within moments, investors were looking at Microsoft like any other tech stock - with deep skepticism - and selling the whole lot accordingly...
...there is the chance that the Justice Department simply felt that its work was done. Like IBM in the '80s, Microsoft didn?t have to lose its antitrust case to be tamed by the protracted scrutiny - the company has had to be on its best behavior for the past five years while a thousand other tech flowers bloomed. By this summer, Bill Gates was introducing the company?s new operating system, Windows XP, with just the sort of concessions on bundling that the feds have been after...
...that just sleight of hand? Was Microsoft contained, or merely redirected? The company's new operating system may play fair, but Microsoft?s browser, Internet Explorer, has achieved a 90-plus percent dominance in the Web-surfing market - and its new incarnation, IE6, may be quietly getting up to Gates? old monopolistic tricks, version...