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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (19369)	5/19/1998 8:40:00 AM
From: Reginald Middleton	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24154

I have a good news story for you. I am sure you must have missed this one. Many high-tech executives and consumers dislike Microsoft's ubiquity, but some recent polls have shown the public siding with the software giant. A survey by Business Week, for example, said the government should keep its hands off Microsoft. A Fortune magazine poll had similar results. Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee who has supported Microsoft, attacked the lawsuits as "choking life out of the golden goose." "There is no antitrust case against Microsoft. In the software and computer markets, consumers continue to get better, faster, more powerful, and easier-to-use products at lower and lower prices," Barbour said. "Government regulation won't improve anything for the consumer." He added: "Everybody knows that Microsoft's competitors are behind these lawsuits." House majority leader Dick Armey, who has sided with Microsoft in this legal battle also weighed in: "The Justice Department is saying, 'We'll make your most basic business decisions for you--or else.' That kind of blackmail should frighten every entrepreneur in the nation." Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Washington), who represents Microsoft's home state and counts among his constituents many of the software giant's employees, also took a hard line against the efforts of the trustbusters: "While there is no formal role for Congress, I want to state to Microsoft's critics that any attempt to regulate the Internet or the software industry through legislation will be massively opposed and never pass the Senate," he said. Mike Sax, president of the Association of Software Competitors, a trade association representing more than 150 software developers, took issue with what he described as the increasingly politicized nature of the case. "These lawsuits are based not on facts, but on politics. Software and hardware companies alike are being held hostage by the efforts by a few companies to gain the upper hand in the marketplace through government intervention," he said. "If the Justice Department is successful in asserting a right to dictate the features of software products, innovation, and competition will suffer and, ultimately, consumers will pay the price." The Independent Institute, a think tank in Oakland, California, said in a statement: "Microsoft's rivals--chiefly Netscape--are attempting to use the Justice Department to compensate for their own failures. These include the failure to develop server-side software and not expanding their Web site into a general purpose search engine like Yahoo or Lycos." In the past, Netscape has said that Microsoft's allegedly anticompetitive practices have hurt its business. It also is in the process of trying to expand its Web site, dubbed Netcenter, into an Internet "portal," or home page for surfers.