About Windows monopoly

A government attorney intoned a litany of what he called Microsoft offenses against antitrust laws Tuesday morning before a packed courtroom. David Boies, the lead attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in its quest to reign in Microsoft practices, focused particularly on a June 21, 1995, meeting at which, he said, Microsoft tried to divide the browser marketwith Netscape Communications. He pointed to notes by then-Netscape chief technology officer Marc Andreessen as proof. "Look at the documents," Boies said. As has become his custom, Boies spoke fluidly, without notes, calling up documents at will to reinforce his points. He highlighted e-mail messages from Microsoft senior vice president Jim Allchin that talk of the company_s need to use Windows as a competitive advantage. "We must use Windows - it_s the one thing they do not have," Allchin wrote. Boies said Microsoft was so intent on using its Windows monopoly that it was willing to hold back new technology from OEM partners, even if those partners -- and, by extension, their customers -- would suffer as a result. In an e-mail message, Allchin wrote that the company should withold certain other technologies in Windows 98 so the company could get its Internet Explorer browser integrated with the OS. There was a market for a separate browser and an OS, but Microsoft not only integrated the browser into Windows, but also "welded it so OEMs and customers couldn_t change it," Boies said. Boies hammered home three points: that Microsoft monopolized the OS market, that it attempted to do the same with browsers --both in defiance of section two of the Sherman Antitrust Act -- and that it practiced unreasonable constraint of trade, a violation of section one. Toward the latter point, he said Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft entered into exclusive deals with ISPs to distribute and maintain its browser and to refrain from distributing Netscape Navigator. Microsoft will have its turn to present its key points later Tuesday afternoon.