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Technology Stocks : IBM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: art slott who wrote (5908)	11/6/1999 11:22:00 AM
From: art slott	Respond to of 8220

>If Microsoft does not settle and Jackson's rulings are upheld, other firms could use the findings for the basis of civil lawsuits against Microsoft, experts said. Firms could cite Jackson's finding that Microsoft was a monopoly and would only need to prove their company was injured by abuse of that monopoly power.< news.excite.com

To: art slott who wrote (5908)	11/6/1999 10:55:00 PM
From: Arrow Hd.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8220

Art, I don't believe IBM will be interested in getting into any litigation with MSFT. There would be little to gain monetarily and the discovery process would be brutal. Also, Y2K may bring enough litigation for everyone if there is any opportunity to claim damages. I do believe that Netscape has legitimate claims and some of the PC companies that got leaned on probably could develop a good story but keep in mind that these players still have to work with each other so it is not likely they will file. The biggest nightmare could be with the state's Attorney Generals who will be looking for a windfall similar to the tobacco industry. Truly a parasitic move on their part ostensibly in the public interest. What is truly sad for MSFT is all of this could have been avoided if it wasn't for pure arrogance on Gate's part. It would have been easy to have their cake and eat so to speak by pricing the bundles such that there was no economic opportunity to separate the pieces. Predatory pricing issues under anti-trust are avoided by having enough revenue in the bundle to allocate across the bundle so each piece has enough revenue to pass the profitability test which avoids the claims of selling at a loss to gain or control share. Instead of 100% they end up with 95% which is more than enough to control the market yet avoids the DOJ claims and strengthens the MSFT claims that they win because they are best of breed. Anyway, this is a long story so I will end it here with a prediction that there will be a settlement, MSFT won't be broken up, there will be a Consent Decree that does nothing more than get MSFT to agree that they will operate under reasonable business practices and not violate any anti-trust provisions and there will be a monetary penalty that will go into some kind of fund to grease the palms of those cry the loudest. Just an opinion. I am only a casual observer.