States' lawyer attacks sanders' pro-Microsoft testimony

Microsoft had high hopes for its first witness in the antitrust trial. But

the testimony of Jerry Sanders III, the flamboyant chairman of Advanced Micro

Devices turned into a dud for the defense when Sanders admitted he had asked

Microsoft chief Bill Gates for a favor in return for agreeing to testify in

Microsoft's favor.

Sanders was the first of more than a dozen witnesses Microsoft is calling on

to testify in favor of the antitrust settlement agreement between the company

and the US Justice Department, Microsoft is also fighting calls by the nine

opposing states, who claim the agreement will prove ineffective to prevent

Microsoft from continuing to engage in anticompetitive behavior.

Howard Gutman, an attorney for the states, quickly sought to discredit

Sanders testimony in a similar fashion in which Microsoft lawyers hurt the

credibility of most of the states' witnesses. Rather than attacking the

substance of the testimony, the lawyers are attacking the credibility of the

witnesses.

Gutman told Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that Sanders had asked Gates to get

Microsoft to announce support for its Hammer chip technology ahead of a

competing product being developed by Intel. ''Yes, I asked Mr. Gates to hold

Intel to the same standard he held us to," Sanders responded when asked if

he had asked gates for a favor in return for his testimony.

Sanders also conceded that while he said he opposed the proposals for tougher

sanctions requested by the nine states, he had not read those proposals.

Instead, Sanders said Gates had told him the proposals were ''crazy'' and would

fragment the Windows operating system. ''You've never checked to this day

whether what Mr. Gates told you was true in the remedies,'' Gutman asked.

Sanders agreed he had not read the states' proposals.

In his testimony, Sanders said that the Windows computer standards have

greatly benefited consumers. Fragmenting the Windows operating system by forcing

Microsoft to release a stripped down version of Windows that individual

companies could customize, would be giant step backward. ''Any relief that would

fragment the Microsoft Windows platform, and thereby impair the large

compatibility benefits provided by that platform, would set the computer

industry back almost 20 years, all at tremendous cost to consumers and to the

national economy,'' Sanders said.