Word: microsoft
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...then there's the problem of getting Microsoft to obey the new rules. "Conduct remedies require some degree of cooperation and good faith--or a very significant enforcement apparatus," says Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Microsoft's critics complain that the company doesn't act in good faith: they point out that this case was filed in the first place when Justice determined Microsoft had violated a 1995 consent agreement. Enforcement mechanisms have their own problems. Almost nobody--inside Microsoft or out of it--wants the Federal Government overseeing Microsoft's business decisions and product designs...
...conduct remedies cited most often by Microsoft's competitors is to force Gates to share the Windows source code. "It would level the playing field and allow programmers to write applications just as good as Microsoft's," says Bob Young, founder and chairman of Red Hat, a Microsoft rival. Microsoft could also be required to license Windows to competitors, who could then sell Windows clones...
...Microsoft's fiercest detractors insist that only one remedy will address all Microsoft's misdeeds and ensure that it sin no more: breaking up the company, much as AT&T was split into the Baby Bells in 1984. In one scenario, Microsoft would be divided along functional lines: one company that makes applications software, one built around the Internet and other new media, and one that just does Windows. A functional breakup would prevent Microsoft from using Windows for leverage in the applications and new-media markets, but it would leave the Windows monopoly intact...
...other leading scenario is to slice Microsoft into several "Baby Bills": mirror-image companies that all have equal rights to Windows. An advantage to this approach is that it would create real competition in the operating-system market. Since the Baby Bills would be fighting for market share, each would have a strong incentive to improve Windows--to offer it more cheaply, to make it more crash resistant...
Despite all of the breakup talk, the end result of the litigation may well be less extreme. Microsoft's lawyers are working hard to get Judge Jackson's decision reversed--and they'll fight fiercely against any structural remedies. Courts are usually reluctant to break up a company, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, which would hear Microsoft's appeal, will be no exception. "I don't think Judge Jackson's opinion will emerge unscathed," says George Washington University law professor William Kovacic. "And if it's diminished in significant ways, the foundations...