Word: microsoft
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WASHINGTON: Boy, is Bill Gates ever in trouble this time. Not only did the Microsoft CEO display a Clinton-like "failure of recollection" when the Justice Department asked him about his business practices under oath last week, but the feds are also alleging that Microsoft beat on everyone from Apple to Intel "at the specific and pointed direction of Bill Gates." The charges, contained in a hefty 89-page court filing released Tuesday, constitute a none-too-subtle warning to the tousle-haired billionaire -- be more forthcoming in your final deposition Wednesday, or we'll throw the book...
...Bill Gates put the squeeze on Andy Grove? That's the latest antitrust charge federal investigators are pursuing in the Microsoft case, according to Wednesday's New York Times. Attempting to prove a pattern of abuse of monopoly power, the feds are focusing on a well-known August 1995 confab between Gates and Grove at Intel's campus. The Microsoft CEO was "livid" about certain software developments at the Intel Architecture Lab (IAL), according to an internal memo; the thought of the chipmaker meddling in multimedia and Java programs that would conflict with Microsoft's Windows ambitions...
...technology has taken so much of software's workload over the last decade. But while Gates gave Grove credit for "stepping back" on the software issue in a 1996 conversation published in Fortune, Grove claimed he "basically caved." Said the Intel boss: "Introducing a Windows-based software initiative that Microsoft doesn't support... well, life's too short for that...
...Redmond's detractors point out that any company that can muscle Intel around is clearly a monopoly, and an abusive one at that. The pro-Microsoft ranks believe their rivals see conspiracy in the most routine business meetings. But with both ends of the Wintel axis under federal investigation, there are no winners here...
...down from 23 in July but still much higher than the previous peak of 19 in 1991, according to earnings tracker First Call. Meanwhile, market leaders still sport bubble-like P/Es: Coca-Cola, where unit sales are growing about 8% a year, has a P/E of 51. Microsoft's is 63; Cisco Systems', 78. High-flying Internet stocks have no P/E because they have no "E." Yahoo, the Net-search directory, trades at 73 times revenue. The comparable multiple for Coke...