Notice the last sentence...
Friday December 12, 1:57 am Eastern Time
Microsoft, Netscape in "healthy competition"-Gates
By Paul Eckert
BEIJING, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Chairman
Bill Gates on Friday refused to discuss a key U.S. antitrust action
against his company but said its browser war with Netscape
Communications Corp (Nasdaq:NSCP - news) would continue.
''This will continue. They'll have a new version, we'll have a new
version. It's a healthy competition that you expect in the computer
software market,'' Gates told an audience at China's leading technology
university.
Gates did not reply to a reporter's question about a U.S. federal
judge's ruling on Thursday barring Microsoft from requiring personal
computer makers who license its Windows 95 operating software to also
accept its Internet Web browser.
Microsoft's current browser was winning ground in the race with
Netscape, Gates said.
''Today, our latest browser, the Internet Explorer 4.0, is doing very
well. It's winning the reviews and it's gaining some share,'' he told
students at Qinghua University.
Analysts have said the court ruling could cast a cloud over plans to
bring out Windows 98, the updated successor to the popular Windows 95,
next year.
The ruling, by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the District Court for
the District of Columbia set in motion a months-long process to examine
the views of the government and Microsoft, with a decision likely no
sooner than June 1998.
The decision called for the software giant to ''cease and desist'' from
the practice of licensing the use of any Microsoft personal computer
operating system software, including Windows 95 or its successor
versions, on the condition that the computer manufacturer also install
Microsoft browser software.
Mark Murray, a spokesman for Microsoft in the United States, called the
decision ''mixed,'' but said the company was gratified the judge had
agreed with it on ''several key points.''
''We're confident that once the court has reviewed all the facts it will
agree that Microsoft complied fully with the consent decree and that
Microsoft's integration of Internet Explorer with Windows 95 is good for
consumers,'' Murray said.
On Thursday, Gates told a news conference after a software developers
convention in the Chinese capital that the software business was too
competitive to permit monopolistic practices.
''It's not a business where anybody has a guaranteed position -- even
Microsoft, with all its success,'' Gates said.
''Unless we teach Windows how to understand speech, how to have vision
and do all these new things ... there's plenty of people standing by to
replace us very quickly.'' |
