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To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (19855)	6/2/1998 2:11:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 24154

Intel Seems Vulnerable to Low-Cost Chips nytimes.com Old news, of course. If anyone believes Reggie, Intel will rule cheap PC's in the end. People will buy the Celeron because it's Intel. Haha. Jeez, they didn't even want to pollute the Pentium name. I don't particularly follow the Intel antitrust news; to repeat without the usual elaboration, I don't put Intel in the same class as Microsoft. I haven't even noted Mysterious Merced slipping yet again, putting NT2K back into the race and crashing the techs. Sheesh, worse than Janet Reno. But, since another sometimes favorite theme of mine, Microsoft vs. Intel on antitrust, is up for discussion, I had to post this one just for the conclusion. Because the business practices that the trade commission's suit seeks to curtail have little impact on the company's ability to compete, analysts do not expect Intel to fight this suit with the same no-compromise approach that Microsoft has taken with the Justice Department. As one Intel executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it: "This isn't a fight; it's a process. The F.T.C. is just doing its job." No! No! Intel must be free to imitate, er, integrate, I mean, innovate! Who is John Galt, anyway? Cheers, Dan.

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (19855)	6/2/1998 12:29:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

As always, you have many good points. However... But what did Intel's strategy get it? All that antitrust training -- and Intergraph still got its TRO. All that backroom dealing and soft-peddling, and the FTC is still going to sue them. I didn't mean to imply that the DOJ or FTC or whomever will sit back and let you take over the world as long as you act nice. Also they are two different companies with two different products so it's hard to compare them. But the latest FTC action on Intel didn't have 20 State Attorney Generals badmouthing Intel all over CNN and local newspapers. There are no emails about "cutting off ... air supply" floating around. Whatever happens with Intel and the Government(s), Intel has reaped far less bad publicity. And that means that their pursuers will have far less political interest in pursuing them. Compare that to Microsoft saying, in essence, "prove that you can be tough enough to take us down." The Consent Decree is ambiguous. It says that Microsoft cannot condition the licensing of any "product" upon the purchase of another "product." It does not say anything about licensing an icon, or that forcing the licensing of only part of the product is not the same thing as forcing the OEM to take the whole product. So Microsoft needed to get this cleared up. And, it needed to make the point that the government is not competent at designing software. In spite of the fact that the situation was a public relations disaster for a short while, I think it accomplished both objectives. Perhaps, but what is the utility of these objectives? Embarassing the government is a very bad thing to do in any case. Furthermore, the ultimate spin on this was that both Microsoft and the Government knew what had to be done (the equivalent of what is done when you drag the icon to the trash), but Microsoft decided to use legal trickery to stick their thumb in the DOJ's eye. Microsoft could have shown up the government by asking for clarifications early on and stating their problems with the ruling. The only effect of their doing all this in so public a manner was the public relations disaster. What was he supposed to say: "Yes, Senator, I am an evil monopolist" "Yes, Senator, I beat up on innocent OEMs"? He's supposed to answer the question. Specifically, Hatch asked if Microsoft's deals with any ISPs precluded advertising Netscape. The correct answer to this question is Yes. This answer was going to come out no matter what. Therefore, Bill Gates had to say Yes. That would have provided Gates an opportunity to defend the practice. By evading the question and forcing (allowing?) Hatch to repeat it three times, Gates implied that he knew he was doing something wrong. This particular tactic is one that is mentioned in Bugliosi's book about being honest and upfront in jury trials. In this case, Gates was on the stand and the public was the jury. He was ill prepped by his lawyers.

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (19855)	6/2/1998 2:16:00 PM
From: Alan Buckley	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24154

[Measured by outcomes, I would say Microsoft's legal strategy has been about as effective as can be expected -- maybe better.] I agree. The AAPL "look and feel" case is the biggest handled by the MSFT lawyers to date. In that one, MSFT's strategy was to "refuse to try the case in the press" (Neukom speaking) and to slowly and methodically narrow the case. By the time they got to the Supreme Court there were only a handful of icons still in question, and AAPL looked weak for bringing the suit at all. I've read comments from John Sculley, AAPLs CEO at the time, that interpret the events along these lines as well. Seems to me that's exactly what they are doing here. They got the DOJ to state in court that it's the icon, not the code, that they want removed. I think that's a weak position. They got that little clause about "and successor systems" lopped off the consent decree ruling. The whole consent decree thing is now pretty much moot. Who cares what the rules are for Windows 95? If MSFT wins in court, their PR problems will disappear. How much "look and feel" complaining is there today?