The newspapers reported this part of the testimony in detail.
BTW,
At computerwire.com you'll find an excellent archive of the trial coverage. Warning, however, to Duke, JFD et al: I expect that y'all will find their coverage to reflect an anti-MSFT bias. I always found their coverage quite enjoyable, but then you'd probably expect that, too. :-)
Oh, and I was thinking about "remedies" (yeah, I know -- we don't need no stinkin' remedies) and it occurred to me that, instead of splitting MSFT into Baby Bill clones, or along product lines, why not just split them off from a good share of their cash pile? Not to give it to the treasury, of course, but rather create a new company with a pile of cash, give MSFT stockholders (Bill included, of course) proportional equity, and set them to competing. I don't think that you'd necessarily have to give them much in the way of IP, with maybe a few billion in cash (surely Bill could find that much lost behind his couch cushions) they ought to be able to buy or create what they'd need.
That, together with a continued insistence that MSFT operate within the law, perhaps also with some pricing-related consent decree (like that they'd have to have a single price schedule for all OEMs -- it could still be volume based with discounts for taking multiple products, but all OEMs would buy off the same schedule, and the decree could have a short life, maybe four years or something), would seem to me to (a) sufficiently destabilize their monopoly, (b) leave the successful MSFT formula intact but ever-so-slightly weakened from a cash and intimidation standpoint, and (c) do no major harm to shareholders; perhaps even create additional wealth for them.
Just a thought.
--Bob |
