And more fun...I admit it - I'm enjoying this.
Tuesday February 2 2:30 PM ET
Mr. Windows' shaky start on the stand
By Charles Cooper, ZDNet
WASHINGTON -- When the prosecution rested late last year, Microsoft promised that its 12 witnesses would put to rest the government's charges about anti-competitive behavior. But Microsoft's defense has got off to an uneven start.
The first witness to take the stand for Microsoft, MIT professor Richard Schmalensee, was touted as the anti-Fisher; that is, an expert whose facts and figures would debunk the claims made by the government's economist -- also from MIT -- Franklin Fisher. But Schmalensee turned out to be a big bust as the often befuddled egghead got manhandled by the Justice Department's lead lawyer, David Boies.
Next up was Paul Maritz, the Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) group vice president who also happened to be the No. 2 executive in the company. If anyone could be counted upon to make a spirited defense and defend to the court the company's strategy, this was the man. But after a strong start, Maritz, too, failed to live up to his potential as a strong witness. Again, Maritz's neutered performance was no doubt constrained by the lapidary questioning of Boies.
Now the task falls to James Allchin, Microsoft's Mr. Windows. This soft-spoken southerner, who bears an unnerving resemblance to Andy Warhol -- at least he did for his first 15 minutes on the stand Monday -- paradoxically turned out to be a very good witness for the government!
Technical tour-de-force
During the morning, the two sides watched a numbing two-and-a-half hours of canned product demonstrations designed to show the benefits derived from browser integration in Windows 98. It was a technical tour-de-force but Boies pounced upon errors in the presentation as he sought to turn it into a tour-de-farce.
Allchin started off by cataloging the advantages of Web browser integration with the operating system. But Boies stopped him cold when he got the Microsoft exec to acknowledge that users could achieve the same result by adding Internet Explorer to Windows 95.
Allchin, who maintained that Internet Explorer replaced core Windows code, said that users who added code were simply doing something akin to updating Windows.
But that would mean consumers had a choice. And Boies made sure Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson heard that Microsoft has stopped making versions of its Windows operating system without incorporating the Internet browser.
Judge all ears
He didn't have to reach for high dudgeon; the judge was paying keen attention to the exchange right throughout.
Boies also got Allchin to change his answer when asked if Microsoft had integrated the browser as a response to the platform threat posed by Web applications. At first he said "no" but then changed to a qualified "yes" after being read excerpts from a deposition by an underling, Ben Slivka.
The government wants to convince the judge that Microsoft didn't really need to weld the operating system to the browser. In that connection, the Slivka testimony is not helpful -- and even less helpful is Allchin's untimely admission.
|
