An Intel Executive Testifies of a 'Credible and Fairly Terrifying' Threat by Microsoft nytimes.com
On that subject, today's story from the NYT.
"It was clear to us that the threat was credible and fairly terrifying," McGeady testified at the Microsoft antitrust trial.
The government backed up McGeady's testimony by introducing internal e-mail from Intel and Microsoft. It also showed more excerpts from the videotaped deposition of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. The Justice Department's intent was to portray Microsoft as using its market muscle to retain its tight grip on the industry and to insure that the pace of innovation was set by Microsoft.
"Basically," McGeady said, "Microsoft was concerned that things would get out of its control."
And we all know Bill is nothing if not a control freak. Or at least he used to be, these days he can't remember anything about any of this stuff.
The portions of Gates' taped deposition shown in court centered on Microsoft's relationship with Intel, and they were shown to cast doubt on Gates' credibility. In each of the three instances when the government has played portions of 20 hours of videotaped questioning in August, Gates' taped denials have been shown and then compared with witness testimony or e-mail from Gates or other Microsoft executives that seems to contradict him.
On the tape shown Monday, government lawyer David Boies asked Gates if he was aware of work by Intel on Internet software. Gates said, "I can't think of any."
On the stand Monday, McGeady told of a meeting on Aug. 2, 1995, at Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., attended by senior executives from Microsoft and Intel including Gates and Intel Chairman Andy Grove. McGeady attended the meeting and briefed Gates and the other Microsoft executives on the work Intel was doing on Internet software -- mainly programming intended to make audio and video sent over the Internet play faster and more smoothly.
Gates, McGeady said, became "very enraged." He added, "His view was that we were competing with Microsoft."
The Justice Department also introduced an internal Intel memo that McGeady wrote after the meeting, which said that Gates was "livid" about Intel's "investments in the Internet and wanted them stopped."
Microsoft must be free to innovate! But not anybody else! Only Bill knows where we want to go, today! Has the "innovation" line been heard of late, or has it gotten too embarrassing to repeat it?
In July 1995 Gates met with Grove and in a subsequent e-mail informed his senior executives about the meeting. "The main problem between us right now is NSP," he wrote. "We are trying to convince them to basically not ship NSP."
Later, Gates wrote that a point he "kept pushing to Andy is that we are the software company here, and we will not have any kind of equal relationship with Intel on software."
When Grove asked why Microsoft had not yet agreed with Intel on a framework for sharing intellectual property on a new chip, code-named Merced, one reason Gates offered was, "We were distracted by the NSP crisis -- making sure no one ships that pile of problems."
Nobody ever had any problems with Win95, though, or its successor Win98, which was supposed to suck less. Intel replaced all those Pentium chips with the obscure FP bug, and those parts actually cost something to produce. With Windows, if retail 95 sucked too much, you were supposed to dig up OSR2 somewhere, and then shell out for the OS formerly known as Windows97, when it finally shipped. Win98 was supposed to suck less, but it doesn't seem to, particularly. But Microsoft is just giving the customers what they want, and if the market demanded an OS that sucked less, they'd ship one.
Microsoft says that NSP was not really tailored to work properly with Windows 95, the operating system that it was about to release in August 1995. In his deposition, Gates, with his trademark bluntness, stated, "Intel was wasting its money by writing low-quality software."
As opposed to the original retail Win95, he notes drily and repititiously.
Initially, PC makers were enthusiastic about NSP. But after Microsoft opposed it, the computer makers -- known as OEM's, for original equipment manufacturers -- grew leery and Intel backed down.
After the NSP rift, Intel agreed to give Microsoft advance word of its software work, and PC makers became reluctant to follow anyone's lead but Microsoft's. In e-mail to his senior executives on Oct. 18, 1995, Gates wrote, "Intel feels we have all the OEM's on hold with our NSP chill."
Andy Grove's no dummy.
He noted that Hewlett-Packard was unwilling to do anything to optimize its new PC's for Intel's new MMX chip or "the new audio software Intel is doing using Windows 95, unless we say so. This is good news because it means the OEM's are listening to us."
Tensions in the Intel-Microsoft relationship continued over Internet software. For example, Intel felt that Sun Microsystems' Java, an Internet programming language, was destined to become an industry standard. So Intel had technical programs to support Java, which could theoretically become a threat to the dominance of Windows someday.
After a meeting with a Microsoft executive, Frank Gill, an Intel executive, wrote in an internal e-mail, "Java remains a major controversy."
Intel's support for Java, Gill wrote, was viewed by Microsoft as "supporting their mortal enemy."
They are all enemies now.
Cheers, Dan. |
