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US government seeks break up of Microsoft

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: The US government has formally recommended the breakup of world’s largest software company, Microsoft Corporation. It has proposed that the company should be broken down into two entities in order to check its monopoly on various software segments. The Department of Justice and 17 US states submitted their proposal to the federal judge hearing the antitrust case against the software company.

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The government decision is expected to have serious implication on the punishment ruling that Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is expected to make in May. He had ruled a few days back that Microsoft had indeed violated US antitrust laws to throttle competition.

The government’s proposal is considered to be the strictest penalty that has been sought in the court against a company since AT&T, which was asked to spin off its regional companies into the so called baby bells in 1982. It was in 1911 that the Standard Oil company was broken down into smaller companies.

According to the proposal, while one company should have the application software, the other should handle the operating system suite of products. The split would last 10 years.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has termed the proposal as unjustified, unreasonable and arbitrary. He said that the proposal if implemented would stifle innovation. The company has said that it would filed its response to the government proposal on May 10. Microsoft has earlier said that it would challenge the Federal judge’s ruling in the Supreme Court.

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