Whilst I would like to believe as you do that MS is doomed, I don't see that happening among the large corps we deal with - most including the company I am with are falling over backwards to ged into bed with MS.

Tom Siebel is one high-profile CEO who has ent over for Billy. Siebel will develop a full range of CRM software built on .NET, for his trouble, Bill will thrown him a few bones.

The settlement takes me right back to the day Reagan's republican admin let IBM walk at a time that the judge (EdelStein) was preparing to tear the company apart for the level of its guilt & harm done.

A comparison (ps I don't fully agree with the points this person is making re innovation by either IBM or Microsoft. IBM (who I worked for at the time) was every bit as guilty as MS is today, of squashing the most innovative competitors) ...

[link|http://www.independent.org/tii/news/010831Armentano.html|Antitrust or Bust]

extract >>>>

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Twenty years ago, under very similar circumstances, the Reagan administration handled a major antitrust problem it inherited very differently. IBM was indicted by the Johnson administration's Department of Justice in 1969 and charged with illegal monopolization of the general-purpose digital computer systems market. The suit alleged that IBM had systematically engaged in certain exclusionary practices -- sound familiar? -- that tended to create and maintain a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Act. The case finally went to trial in 1975. Yet after more than six years in court and a trial transcript of more than 104,000 pages, the government abandoned the case in 1982 since, as Assistant Attorney General William Baxter so bluntly put it, the 13-year legal persecution was simply "without merit."

IBM, like Microsoft, was accused of bundling software with hardware and thereby excluding competitors, even though, again like Microsoft, the bulk of the consumer-relevant information demonstrated that IBM had innovated rapidly and lowered prices. Finally, in IBM as in Microsoft, there were disgruntled competitors and business rivals who were anxious to see IBM convicted and "tied up" (as one competitor so colorfully put it) by antitrust regulation for years.

In contrast, although there were no findings of fact in the IBM case, there are very unfavorable ones in Microsoft's case. Yet the only reason that there were no unfavorable findings in the IBM case is because it was withdrawn before the angry trial judge could write one!

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