Justice Dept and states differ on Microsoft
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A group of state attorneys general said on Thursday that the consent decree that settled the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft Corp has failed to reduce the company's monopoly, disagreeing with the assessment of U.S. antitrust officials.
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The U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general are concerned that Microsoft is revising deadlines that it agreed to as part of its antitrust settlement. At issue are changes that Microsoft says it needs to make in the schedule for releasing documentation related to Vista, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
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The Justice Department said Microsoft would allow users to select a default program to handle desktop search.
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Four states that recently said the U.S. federal judgment in the Microsoft antitrust case has done its job have made an about face, now joining&#160;other states asking for an extension of the judgment.New York, Maryland, Louisiana, and Florida asked the court to extend the term of the judgment for another five years, according to a filing they made with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday. The states join California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia in asking for the extension.As recently as August the states led by New York said the judgment was achieving its goal of fostering competition.Now they&#39;ve changed their tune. &quot;An extension is appropriate to assure that marketplace participants have sufficient opportunity to establish positions to compete against Microsoft, an entrenched monopolist,&quot; they wrote in the filing.Microsoft&#39;s &quot;well-known difficulties&quot; complying with parts of the judgment have hurt the chances for more competition in the market, they wrote. The filing also stated that the pace of technological development of the overall operating system market hasn&#39;t moved as fast as expected when the judgment was written, so that removing oversight of the judgment now would impair the chances of potential competitors.The states suggest that extending the judgment shouldn&#39;t unduly harm Microsoft as the company said in&#160;a case brought by the European Commission&#160;that the settlement in the U.S. hadn&#39;t negatively impacted its incentive to innovate.In response to the filing by the New York group of states, Microsoft reiterated its comments following the filing earlier this week by the California group. &quot;We believe the consent decree has served its purpose,&quot; Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, said in a statement. &quot;Microsoft has worked hard to implement the decree&#39;s requirements and has changed its practices as a result.&quot;
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SEATTLE -- States pressing for continued scrutiny of Microsoft Corp.'s business practices failed to support their argument with evidence, the software maker said in a court filing Friday.
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Despite a complaint to the contrary, plaintiffs from the 2002 Justice Department settlement aconcluded that "there is no evidence that Microsoft has not fully disclosed" the APIs it was required to.
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Four states concerned about Microsoft Corp.'s market power are pressing a federal court to extend by five years its oversight of the software company, which began in 2002 as part of a landmark antitrust settlement.
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A federal court hearing today is set to review the terms of Microsoft's five-year-old settlement order, which ended the Justice Department's antitrust case against the software giant. A brief filed by Google argues the order should remain in force, because of anticompetitive features in Windows Vista.
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Microsoft seems to not have learned much from the antitrust suits brought against it.
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Despite numerous out-of-court settlements with various state governments around the country, it appears Microsoft's legal woes aren't over yet.
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WASHINGTON -- Nearly a decade after the Clinton administration began a landmark effort to break up Microsoft , the Bush administration has adopted a different course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct, including the recent rejection of a complaint by Google.
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Microsoft will make changes to its desktop search program following a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) by Google, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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A check of yesterday's status report from the Department of Justice officials monitoring the status of Microsoft's 2002 antitrust settlement revealed an interesting nugget: We can expect Vista's first service pack before the end of the year, along with Windows XP SP3.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft officials deny that theÂ Department of Transportation's recent moratoriumÂ on adoption of Windows Vista is indicative of any widespread reluctance in the government sector to install the new operating system. In a report that was circulated internally within the department by DOT Chief Information Officer Daniel Mintz in late January 2007, that only surfaced publicly on March 5, the IT manager placed an indefinite halt on procurement of the software and any planned desktopÂ upgrades to Vista Among the reasons cited by Mintz in ceasing any deployment of the newest OS from Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft were questions about its compatibility with other programs, including earlier versions of Windows, and the estimated costs for moving to Vista. Despite the setback, Microsoft executives claim that Vista adoption is moving forward at a consistent pace in the government sector, and on par with similar installations among private industry. Although aware of the budgetary and scheduling conflicts that often cause the federal government to lag behind businesses in bringing onboard major new platforms, Microsoft contends that the OS is already finding a home in the space. "We're wrapping up the largest early adoption program for the windows OS ever, and over ten percent of our partners were from the federal government," said Patrick Svenburg, Windows client solution specialist with the Microsoft Federal group. "This also represented our largest partnership ever with the federal government; we worked closely with them throughout the entire development cycle to address their concerns and priorities." Svenburg said that Microsoft is planning to host senior officials from the Department of Transportation in Redmond before the end of March to address the concerns the department expects to encounter in moving to the OS. In his memo, Mintz specifically cited "lack of a compelling business case" as his rationale for temporarily banning the move to Vista, along with Microsoft Office 2007 and the Internet Explorer 7 browser. To be fair, Mintz and other DOT officials attributed some of the department's reluctance to upgrade on the agency's planned move to a new Washington headquarters later this year. The DOT technology executive didn't immediately respond to calls seeking further comment on the Vista moratorium. Microsoft representatives said that like many of its largest, Enterprise Agreement-level customers, government organizations such as the Transportation Department will need to avail themselves of the software maker's compatibility and deployment automation programs to help overcome some of the perceived challenges with Vista deployment. Some industry watchers believe, however, Â that it may still be hard for many federal agencies to make a sufficient business case for spending the time and money needed to move to the platform. Specifically, most of the major departments have invested heavily in moving their critical applications to Web-based systems, which could serve to dampen enthusiasm and demand for migration to the new OS and productivity suite, said Shawn McCarthy, a government IT analyst with IDC, based in Framingham, Mass. "A lot of government sites have been trying to migrate more applications to Web interfaces that any desktop system can access, and that's taken pressure off the organizations on the client side," McCarthy said. "The individual agencies are under a lot of pressure to make a business case anytime they want to do systems upgrades; if they can't really justify with benefit that will be seen, the upgrade either doesn't happen or migration is slower." The analyst said that despite Microsoft's claims that features such as improved security will convince government CIOs to get behind adoption of Vista, federal decision-makers will take a wait-and-see attitude toward the product and hold-off on moving over until the operating system's advantages are proven by others. Other experts said that it's too early to pass judgment on government or private-sector adoption of Vista since large organizations don't typically move to new technologies quickly. Michael Cherry, analyst with independent research firm Directions On Microsoft, based in Kirkland, Wash., said that the Transportation Department and other agencies will likely move to Vista incrementally over time. Organizations will also need to spend valuable time and money doing extensive evaluations of the OS before any installation begins, which could push back adoption further, he said. "When I read the [DOT] memo, I heard an IT department asking its people to refrain from buying ad hoc Vista licenses and machines, because they can't support that yet," said Cherry. "Something else to consider is that IT people have a lot of projects that they're already working and limited resources; Vista is not the kind of thing that merits dropping everything else to move on it quickly." Cherry said that he does believe federal agencies will begin adopting the OS at the same rate that they retire older desktop systems, although he noted that IT departments will likely give more consideration than ever before to alternatives including open source and Apple products. The first types of government users the analyst believes are likely to install Vista for functional reasons will be employees who carry sensitive data on their laptops, or view such information remotely on their PCs, he said. Those users will be seeking the onboard protection offered by the BitLocker encryption feature of Vista, according to the expert. In general he believes it's too soon for anyone to worry about adoption of the new OS. "It's way too soon to be taking individual cases or data points and trying to make a trend of them," Cherry said. "Vista might be good, but it's not so good people are going to dump their existing machines overnight just to get it."
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Several U.S. states are requesting a five-year&#160;extension&#160;of the&#160;antitrust judgment against Microsoft&#160;to ensure the company&#39;s continued compliance, according to a Tuesday court filing.Sections of the 2002 antitrust judgment are due to expire next month. A status hearing is scheduled for Nov. 6 with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.In the filing, the states argue that Microsoft could use the continued dominance of its Internet Explorer browser to choke off other emerging middleware technologies from Google Inc. and Adobe System Inc. that work in close conjunction with Web browsers.The filing mentions Google Gears and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), technologies that allow for offline use of Internet-centric applications.&quot;Because Web-centric technologies are so dependent on Web browsers and servers for access to consumers, they are particularly susceptible to impediments that Microsoft could interpose were the final judgment were to expire now,&quot; the filing said.The states contend Microsoft could &quot;tilt the playing field&quot; to favor its new&#160;Silverlight multimedia technology, which competes with Adobe&#39;s Flash.The states also argued there have been continued problems with the program under which Microsoft licenses communication protocols to enable other vendors&#39; products to more smoothly work with ones from Microsoft.The technical documentation has been inadequate over the last five years, while Microsoft has continued to gain market share with its servers. Microsoft only recently delivered more rewritten documentation that is being evaluated, the filing said.The document was filed by California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia.&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official has joined the debate surrounding Apple Computer's proprietary digital music technology by criticizing European antitrust activities, butÂ groups attacking AppleÂ are defending their actions. Speaking in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Thomas Barnett, assistant attorney general at the DOJ's antitrust division, warned that forcing companies to reveal their intellectual property stifles innovation. He used Apple as an example, in a nod toÂ growing discontent in EuropeÂ regarding the way that music purchased from iTunes is tied to the iPod. Architects of complaints against Apple in Europe say he's got it wrong. "We're not attacking intellectual property rights but saying they should be implemented in a way which doesn't dictate which player you use," said Torgeir Waterhouse, a senior advisor with the Norwegian Consumer Council. His organization filed a complaint to Norway's consumer representative, or ombudsman, arguing that it's illegal for Apple to limit iTunes customers to playing music from the store exclusively on iPods. Along with similar representatives in Denmark and Sweden, the Norwegian ombudsman asked Apple toÂ defend its policy. In a written reply, Apple said it won't budge on the issue but the company plans to meet representatives from the countries later this month to further discuss the issue. If Apple won't open up, the ombudsman will take the company to court. Waterhouse suggests that Apple could solve the problem by licensing its digital rights management technology to other device makers so that iTunes customers could choose among devices or opt for an open standard that would be compatible with more devices. Barnett's criticisms of European antitrust policy, including comments that the policy is aimed at helping competitors instead of consumers, are generally in line with comments from U.S. officials since the Bush administration came to power, said Scott Megregian, a partner and head of the European competition group in the law firm McDermott Will & Emery UK. He disagrees with the argument that requiring companies to open up some of their technology stifles innovation. "That's an argument without support," he said. "Microsoft hasn't stopped innovating that I can tell despite regulations and attack by the E.U." So far, the European Commission has likely communicated with the countries that are pursuing Apple and has probably expressed an opinion on the matter, he said. While no official complaints have been filed with the Commission, if one is, the result will have the makings of a historical battle. "This has the potential to be the next big high-profile dispute," Megregian said.
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Microsoft Corp. settled legal disputes yesterday with two of its largest remaining antagonists, ensuring that its antitrust deal with the Justice Department will not be appealed to the US