Microsoft decision imminent

Will Microsoft continue to bloom?

The final ruling on whether Microsoft is to be split up is to be announced within hours.

It marks the end of the marathon trial of the software giant, once the world's largest company by market value.

Court officials in Washington said Judge Thomas Jackson would make his ruling at 1630 local time (2030 GMT).

It is two months since he decided that the software giant had broken American anti-trust (competition) laws.

Since then the US Justice Department and Microsoft have been arguing for and against plans to punish the firm by splitting it up.

Judge Jackson is widely expected to order the company to be split into two after weeks of legal argument.

Guilty of anti-trust violations

He has already ruled that the company has broken anti-trust laws, abusing its dominant position in the computer operating system market.

The US Government charged, and the court accepted, that Microsoft forced its customers to adopt its own browser by discounts and by putting pressure on computer makers, to the detriment of rival software maker Netscape.

But Microsoft has vowed to fight the ruling in the appeals courts, and argues that any break-up would reduce innovation and consumer choice.

"We fully expect to prevail on the most important points on appeal, which is that we remain an integrated company and that we retain our right to continue to respond to customers and integrate new capabilities into Windows," Microsoft President Steve Ballmer said.

In its legal response to the Justice Department's final submission - which was delivered on Monday - Microsoft asked the judge to include previously suggested language that would give a broken-up Microsoft more freedom to enter into agreements with software developers and computer makers.

It also said the latest US Justice Department submission was "confirming that certain provisions are more extreme than they might appear at first blush" and were "blithely ignoring substantial problems Microsoft identified regarding the feasibility of complying with many of the provisions as drafted".

In Monday's court filing, the department agreed to grammatical and semantic changes, but refused to concede to the company on major points such as giving Microsoft additional time to nail down details on how the break-up should occur, or more freedom in licensing and marketing its products.

Appeal seems certain

The Justice Department and 17 states want Microsoft broken up into two separate companies - one to market and produce Windows, and the other to handle Microsoft Office and other applications software, along with the Internet Explorer web browser.

Government lawyers, in their submission on Monday had accepted Microsoft's proposal to describe the break-up as a "divestiture" rather than a "reorganisation", but it rejected most changes "because they would undermine or frustrate the purpose and effectiveness" of its proposed remedy to break up the company.

Microsoft has already said it will appeal against the ruling - a move which could extend the landmark legal battle for months or years.