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To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (22776)	2/26/1999 4:22:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 24154

Judge grills Microsoft exec zdnet.com Another article, quoted for amusement only. The antitrust enforcer pounced on a memo by Gateway executive Kathy Skidmore. In a February, 1997, memo, she wrote to CEO Ted Waitt that Microsoft manager Brian Fujiwara told her the company's choice of Netscape for the company's internal network was "a HUGE issue with Microsoft. "He said Microsoft wants to get back to doing co-marketing and sales campaigns with Gateway, but they won't, if they see Gateway anything but pro-Microsoft," she continued. "He said and I quote, 'Dell turned Netscape down because they did not want to hurt their relationship with Microsoft. Therefore, they (Dell) get special things because of it.'" When Bill says jump, Michael Dell knows the proper response is "how high?". Ted Waite just doesn't understand. Kempin said he had no idea if that conversation ever happened. If he'd known about it, he said, he would have fired Fujiwara. Strange. It all sounds like standard Microsoft business practice to me, beloved by friend of Bill everywhere. Boies drilled Kempin for pricing data. Wasn't low prices for Windows one of the "special things" Dell got for toeing the line? No, Kempin said, it wasn't. As the NYT said in its story, there were other reasons Dell got that particular "special thing". The government's chief interrogator tried to get Kempin to talk about how much Dell Computer Corp. paid for Windows and how much Gateway paid, but Microsoft and Jackson both intervened: the data was still under court seal. The two sides agreed to discuss the matter in closed session. Boies presented parts of an October, 1998, deposition in which Kempin answered a series of inquiries from Justice Department lawyers about the company's pricing. Then, Kempin told Justice Department attorney Steven Holtzman the company had never considered the prices of competing products when it set the price for Windows 98 since "I believe that the competitors are basically selling inferior type products." As opposed to Windows, the "Moby Dick" of operating systems. Cheers, Dan.