Microsoft saw Java as its 'biggest threat,' judge's memo reveals zdnet.com
That nutty judge still doesn't understand about "colorful language" and "relatively junior employees". Oh well.
According to Jackson's ruling, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates on May 26, 1995 wrote in an e-mail that "the Netscape/Java combination threatens to "commoditize' the operating system."
He can't remember that.
Jackson cited other government exhibits showing that following a 1997 meeting with Gates, Microsoft's Ben Slivka described Java as "the biggest threat to Microsoft," writing in an e-mail to Gates that "clearly the work the Java team is doing has hit a raw nerve with you."
Slivka was just being a commie again.
Jackson also cited a memo by Microsoft Vice President Jeff Raikes that says "the situation is threatening our operating system and desktop applications share at a fundamental level" and "Netscape pollution must be eradicated."
Another one of those junior employees. Pretty colorful language, though.
Other evidence mentioned in the ruling claims that Gates was the alleged leader in the "charge to wrest control of Java from Sun" and cites an August 25, 1997 e-mail sent by Microsoft's Tod Nielsen to Bill Gates saying, "We are just proactively trying to put obstacles in Sun's path and get anyone who wants to write in Java to use Microsoft's J/Direct."
Bill can't remember anything about that either.
Jackson noted that the government's case hinges on "contemporaneous statements of Microsoft executives" to support its claims.
For example, Jackson pointed to an e-mail sent by Moshe Dunie, a Microsoft vice president, to Gates and several other executives: "The stunning insight is this: To make consumers switch away from Netscape, we need to make them to upgrade sic toWindows 98 . . . We can leverage these assets to convert the Navigator installed base and eclipse Netscape's browser market share leadership. But if we rely on IE4 alone to achieve this, we will fail."
Microsoft executive Christian Wildfeuer apparently agreed. In an e-mail sent on Feb. 24, 1997, he wrote: "It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser market share on the merits of IE 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the operating system asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator."
Make people use IE instead of Navigator. That's choice for you. It's what the customers want! Microsoft taking us where we want to go!
I got to stop now, the whole article is stuff I'd normally find quotable, but what the heck, ZD deserves the hits. Maybe Microsoft should sandbag the whole thing and just rely on the Chicago School interpretation of the D.C. circuit. We'll see.
Cheers, Dan.
P.S. A bit of good news for the 'softies at the bottom, though:
Jackson did throw out one of the charges made by the states against Microsoft, saying a monopoly leveraging charge was inconsistent with the plain text of the Sherman Antitrust Act and Supreme Court pronouncements.
The AP "objectively" lead with that one in their story: 1 Complaint About Microsoft Tossed nytimes.com |
