Reactions mixed to Microsoft antitrust settlement
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 30, 2007 at 3:48pm
With most of Microsoft’s antitrust settlement with the government poised to expire this November, federal and state prosecutors overseeing the Windows giant’s compliance were divided Thursday on the deal’s past and future effectiveness, notes CNET.
On one hand, attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice and a posse of state plaintiffs known as the “New York group,” which also includes Maryland, Wisconsin, Ohio and Louisiana, proclaimed the 2002 consent decree with the Bush administration an unqualified success. In a court filing with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Thursday, they said the agreement has accomplished its intended goals.
However, attorneys for the so-called “California group” of plaintiffs—which also includes Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia—beg to differ. Those attorneys, who have a history of being more openly critical of Microsoft than their prosecutorial counterparts, argued in their filing (PDF) that the agreement has been largely ineffective. They suggested that a 10-year term for the consent decree, which they characterized as “standard” practice, would be preferable to the existing five-year life span, particularly since Microsoft only recently released Windows Vista.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
