Posted on 10/20/2007 6:57:43 AM PDT by ShadowAce
WASHINGTON (AP) - Four states concerned about Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT)'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.
The request, filed late Thursday, represents a turnabout for New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Florida. In August, the group signed onto court papers submitted by the Justice Department that said the consent decree reached in 2002 had achieved its goal of safeguarding competition in certain software markets.
In their newest filing, however, the states said that while "competitive developments in the industry today are encouraging, whether they have enough traction to enhance long-term competition" in the market for computer operating systems "is uncertain."
A separate group of six states - led by California - and the District of Columbia said last month during a court hearing that it would ask for a five year-extension of the settlement, to 2012. The decree is set to expire Nov. 12.
The so-called California group of states submitted its request in writing late Oct. 16.
Efforts to extend the decree may face an uphill battle. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said during a hearing Sept. 11 that she would consider the California group's request, but added that any extension would need to be for an "identifiable purpose."
Currently, Microsoft is on track to be in compliance with the antitrust settlement when it expires, Kollar-Kotelly said.
Shares of Microsoft fell 67 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $30.49 in afternoon trading Friday.
Bribes were not sufficient
I demand government intervention on all uncertainties.
First they came after confused OS users, but I
was confident, and didn't care. Next they came....
You don't say! I'll have to ask my little friend Tux about that.
Fedora Core 7, FTW!
It’s amusing to work in the industry and see how much money my company dumps into the coffers of MS every year. I have 5 IBM BladeCenters running Linux and ESX which host almost a quarter of our production systems. We never have outages or downtimes with those systems like we have with the MS systems.
That being said, I hope this isn’t the world ganging up on a company because it has dominance in a marketplace devoid of competition. As Linux improves, MS will be humbled, but even the people who work for MS concede that MS’s operating model is to buyout anyone who’s a threat and use their product as their own (Look at SysInternals). How could they do that with a user-supported OS?
Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player are still illegally tied to Windows. (Yes, I know MS has argued strenuously that they have to be tied to Windows for it to work. That's an absurdly disingenuous argument, since it was their own design decisions which made the tying "mandatory".)
It's a blatant anti-trust violation, but money and power still talk the loudest in American courts.
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