Bill Gates has been taking the stand as a witness for Microsoft during antitrust hearings currently taking place. Mr. Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, and the Chief Software Architect for the company, was appearing as a witness for the defense, his own company. Nine States and the District of Columbia are continuing to pursue the case after the Bush Administration’s DoJ settled with the convicted monopoly in a deal that was seen as very favorable to Microsoft.
During cross-examination of the billionaire by attorneys for the plaintiffs, a couple of Mac-related tidbits have emerged. The first comes to us from a piece in Infoworld, where Mr. Gates was less committed to Office for the Mac than recent official statements from the company have sounded. From that piece:
The states’ lawyer asked Gates to turn his attention to the states’ provision regarding porting the Office suite. "It’s called porting, but it’s giving away," Gates said, drawing laughter from the courtroom. Kuney asked why Gates claimed the states’ provision forcing it to continue developing Office for the Macintosh would be burdensome, since it’s a product the company already updates. The provision calls for Microsoft to release the same number of Office versions for the Mac as it does for Windows, and with consistent features, which isn’t something the company does now, Gates said.
"Being required over a period of 10 years to do that work regardless of (the Macintosh market) with things we don’t do today, we find that a negative requirement," he said.
You can read the entire piece at Infoworld, and we recommend it as an interesting read.
The Associated Press brought us testimony from the trial that recalled the ancient threat from Microsoft to kill Office for the Mac unless Apple chose Internet Explorer as the default browser in the Mac OS, rather than Netscape Navigator. From the Associated Press article:
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who handled the original liability case, found that Microsoft retaliated against other companies many times.
When Apple Computer chose a rival Web browser over Microsoft’s, Gates called Apple’s chief executive to ask him "how we should announce the cancellation of" Microsoft’s translation of the Office business suite for Apple’s Macintosh computers. Gates did agree, under questioning, that the states’ proposal would have stopped him from making that threat to Apple.
There is additional information about Mr. Gates’ testimony and the ongoing trial in the full article, and it too is an interesting read.
The Mac Observer Spin:
First of all, we need to be reasonable about some of the issues. Mr. Gates is protesting being required to support Office for the Mac for 10 years regardless of the health and vitality of the Mac platform itself. That is burdensome, on the face of it. He also seems to take issue with being required to do anything by anyone, which is understandable if you take into account his position that he, and his company, has done nothing wrong, despite being legally found guilty of being a predatory monopoly. If you can get over the irrational aspect of ignoring what the courts found (and upheld), then you can almost sympathize with him.
Or not.
Mr. Gates may find the requirement to support the Mac platform to be burdensome, but all of the companies and individuals that Microsoft has harmed with its illegal behavior probably found that to be burdensome too. Suck it up, Mr. Gates, and take your medicine like an adult.
In any event, Microsoft is officially on the Mac OS X bandwagon and happy as can be to support the Mac platform. We can hope that continues.
Getting on to Mr. Gates’ threat to Apple. Technically it’s old news, as it happened some five and half years ago, but it’s still grating on the nerves to read his wording today. It really is too bad that the current administration’s DoJ has done such a poor job of protecting the American people. Microsoft is a convicted predatory monopoly, and the company’s key players are unapologetic, have consistently continued to engage in the same behavior that the courts found illegal in the first place, and will in all likelihood continue to do so in the future.