Bill Gates has revved up Microsoft's PR machine once more to spread his software company's view of the antitrust tale.
In a 2,500-word essay in the new issue of The Economist, the Microsoft (MSFT)chairman attacks what he calls "the government's lawsuit on behalf of Netscape" and attempts to set the record straight – or at least skew it in Microsoft's direction. He defends his company's right to build products, talks about a secret meeting with Netscape (NSCP) execs, and ponders the weight of internal email that antitrust regulators have seized upon.
"We are defending the legal right of every company to decide which features go into its own products," wrote Gates, whose mug shot appears on the magazine's cover near an unrelated report on the "demon seed." "... America's antitrust laws do not provide any basis for government regulators to attempt to design software products."
The Economist invited Gates to respond to its 23 May article in which the British magazine reminded him that monopolists have a responsibility to act with restraint and noted that if Microsoft refuses, the next antitrust action may contain more drastic punitive measures. As it is, the government is trying to split the integration of Microsoft's operating system and browser, or at least force Microsoft to include a copy of Netscape's browser with its Windows OS.
Gates maintains that requiring computer-makers selling Windows to include the Microsoft browser with the operating system is legal, despite what the Justice Department says.
"The central flaw in this allegation is that there are absolutely no laws against innovating," wrote Gates, whose company's browser came out after Netscape had begun to pioneer the commercial browser market. "In fact, the law says that every company – from the smallest startups to the largest multinational – should always work to improve its products."
And that, Gates said, is exactly what the world's biggest software company was attempting to do in 1995 when Microsoft minions met with Netscape's Marc Andreessen, the college kid who developed the first graphical gateway to the World Wide Web and whose company was building a better browser. The Justice Department, however, says in one of its most sensational claims that the meeting was held to divide up the browser market.
Gates previously called that collusion charge an outrageous lie. In The Economist, he explains that the meeting was a sharing of ideas "so that Netscape's browser could take advantage of the cool new features we were developing for Windows 95." Gates offered an email written by Andreessen to a Microsoft employee as proof of the meeting's genial agenda: "Good to see you again today – we should talk more often." Gates called that "an odd sentiment given his [Andreessen's] supposed indignation over the meeting" and noted that shortly thereafter, Netscape was a featured developer at a Windows 95 launch event at the Microsoft campus.
Much of the Justice Department's case is buoyed by personal email from Microsoft executives, like one in which Senior Vice President James Allchin writes of "leveraging Windows from a marketing perspective" to defeat Netscape. Gates downplays the email assault, too.
"When you consider that Microsoft ... provided over a million pages of internal documents and emails, it is not surprising that the government has been able to find a handful of statements – many by relatively junior staffers – that can be taken out of context," Gates wrote.
