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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (32360)	11/6/1999 6:28:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

By the way I like Hatch's comment where he asserts that they have preempted MSFT's "likely" illegal tactics in the future that would ahve stifled the internet. What is he talking about? Is NSCP to be allowed sole custody of the browser market? If AOL switches back to Netscape, which they own, then Netscape would instantly have a majority share of the browser market. That AOL uses IE instead of an in-house product shows that it's superior. Of course, AOL f'ed up when they released the Netscape source in an attempt to hurt MSFT. Now if they re-established Netscape's dominance they can't profit much by it, which is why they won't bother.

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (32360)	11/7/1999 2:35:00 AM
From: Sonny McWilliams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

John. I am wondering where "The father of the internet" is in this controversy. I have not heard him weighing in on this case. I guess he is too busy getting prepped by Ms. Wolf on how to be an Alpha man. gg. Talk is going around that the Judge put out pretty harsh language in order to get Msft to settle. He does not want to be overruled again. Most consumers using Windows don't feel that they have been harmed, I am pretty sure. Mostly competitors seem to think so. Sonny

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (32360)	11/7/1999 3:38:00 PM
From: RTev	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

But one should be fair in the partisan take on all this. Slade Gorton, a Republican from Washington, has spoken out against this case and this decision, but so has the state's other US Senator, a Democrat. The state's Democratic governor has also expressed dismay at the decision. According to the Seattle Times, he will kick off his 2000 campaign this week with an event at which he will be introduced by Bill Gates. (Along with Boeing, Microsoft recently contributed heavily to the campaign against a local initiative campaign that was supported by the state GOP, so in that case, MS sided with Democrats.) The only lesson is that politicians are inevitably parochial. That's the way our system is set up. One shouldn't expect anything different. We went through all this long ago. It's clear that Bill Clinton didn't like the idea of this suit, but expressed his misgivings only when it was appropriate -- before the case was filed. Since then, he has kept hands off as he should. On the general issue here, I don't deny that a Republican administration in Washington would be unlikely to appoint this kind of activist anti-trust division. I'm not convinced, however, that a moderate (Bush-like) GOP administration might not have filed this particular suit despite it all. The violation on which this case is based was egregious. Klein's division expanded suit into a broader case than what would have been filed by a less activist AG's office, but it almost needed to file some kind of case. None of this would have happened if the Clinton administration hadn't (apparently) forced the DOJ to cave in on the '95 Consent Decree. They sent all the wrong signals in that case. This administration's early lack of consistency on antitrust policy is a big part of the problem.