Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (22775)	2/26/1999 1:59:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Microsoft Witness Peppered With Questions From Judge nytimes.com Gerald, I'm still a bit confused about your warped view on the clever Microsoft court strategy. Personally, I think if Microsoft was as smart as they claim to be, they'd ship an OS that sucked less. Anyway, on to local hero Kempin, who doesn't seem to have come across all that well, literary pretensions notwithstanding. Then Boies asked whether it was true that Microsoft had expressed threatening disapproval to computer manufacturers that worked with Netscape. Kempin responded that the manufacturers "determine their own destiny," adding, "I have a hard time believing we can tell them what to do." I wonder if the courtroom erupted in guffaws after that one. Coming from the chief enforcer on the OEM front, it seems that Kempin doesn't much believe in himself. I guess we need rudedog to return and tell us that Rose really knew the true story at Compaq, too. But then Boies read from a document in which a Gateway executive recalled a conversation in which a Microsoft executive had told him that Gateway's support of Netscape was "a huge issue for Microsoft." As a result, Boies asserted, "Microsoft charges Gateway a significantly higher price for Windows than Microsoft charges Dell or Compaq." Not true, Kempin said. But then he clarified: Gateway is in fact charged more, he said, but for other reasons that he would not elaborate. If it were easier to dig up past messages, I could bring up local assurances made by friends of Bill here that all the big OEMs paid the same for Windows. Old Joachim must have been confused here, or maybe Gateway gets charged more because he just doesn't like Ted Waite much. Boies read more from the Gateway memo, including an assertion from a Gateway executive that Microsoft's actions were illegal. But before he could finish, the judge took the memo and repeated some of the allegations, asking Kempin: "How about all these other things? Do you deny all of these, too?" "This is Gateway's version," Kempin said. "I have no knowledge of this." Or as Sgt. Schultz used to say, "I know nothing." See no evil, hear no evil for old Joachim. I wish Boies had brought up the old Vobis deal and the postmodern economics of charging double for DOS if an alternative was shipped along with it, but that may be outside the scope of this suit.