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Gates concedes important points

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CIOL Bureau
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Microsoft chief Bill Gates was forced to contradict some of his written

testimony when pressed by layers for the nine states seeking tough sanctions to

prevent his company from continuing its anti-competitive business practices.

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In the second day on the witness stand, the States tried to show that Gates

has been trying to greatly and deliberately exaggerate the impact of the

sanctions being proposed by the states. In one example, Gates said that a

provision that would bar Microsoft from retaliating against computer companies

that also want to support Linux or other operating systems would ''ban Microsoft

from competing in any product category.''

Steve Kuney, the lawyer for the states confronted Gates with an instance in

which he called the CEO of Apple Computer after Apple had announced support for

the Netscape Navigator browser. Gates asked ''how should we announce the

cancellation of' Microsoft's translation of the Office business suite for

Apple's Macintosh computers?" Gates agreed, that under the states' proposal

it would have been illegal for him to make such as threat against Apple.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly prevented Kuney from showing an internal

Microsoft e-mail to Gates that reportedly suggest taking actions against Intel

for its support of Linux. Gates also claimed that the states request for

disclosure of certain technical information would prevent the company from

releasing patches to fix security and other software glitches in a timely

fashion since the states proposal requires a 60-day notification period. Gates

said that while the states' legal language allows Microsoft to make such changes

"for good cause," that language was too vague and would open nearly

every Windows design change to second guessing by competitors.

Gates also admitted that Sun's Java and Netscape's Navigator browser once

posed a threat to the Windows operating system. The admission is important

because the courts have found that Microsoft acted illegally to prevent those

solutions from gaining widespread popularity. Microsoft, however, has argued

that Navigator and Java never posed a serious threat to Windows and thus it

would be improper to punish Microsoft for their failure.

Gates defended Microsoft's right to fight off competition. "It's part of

my job to always look out at a direction of something that could create

competition and be as scared as I can be in addressing that."

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