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Monday, 8 February, 1999, 17:35 GMT
USA versus Microsoft - the 14th week
Microsoft alleged that Feltenization would cause Windows to fail
by independent computer industry analyst Graham Lea
At a time when Microsoft should be gaining some of the lost ground by presenting evidence from its own witnesses, the company experienced its worst week so far in the trial.
David Boies, the Department of Justice's special trial counsel, cross-examined Microsoft's senior vice president Jim Allchin in a relentless three-pronged attack that made a major impact on the credibility of Microsoft's evidence and witnesses. A key claim by Microsoft has been that only with Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) in Windows 98 could users get "the rich experience that comes from integration". Twenty times, Mr Boies brought up a feature of Windows 98 and asked: "If you took a Windows 95 machine without any integrated IE technologies, and you added a stand-alone downloaded-off-the-web or bought-at-retail IE4, you would get the same rich experience that you say you got here?"
Each time Mr Allchin had to agree that the same functionality could be obtained by loading the original version of Windows 95 to which the retail version of IE4 had been added. Mr Boies concluded by asking if "that's what you mean by 'deep integration'?" Windows leverage The second attack was against Microsoft's claim that it had not integrated Windows 98 and IE to make life difficult for Netscape. Mr Boies produced a number of emails that Mr Allchin had sent that gave contrary evidence: "we must leverage Windows more. Treating IE as just an add-on to Windows which is cross-platformed loses our biggest advantage: Windows market share."
When David Boies pressed Mr Allchin about a deposition in which he had said that including IE3 with Windows was done to compete with Netscape, Stephen Holley, counsel for Microsoft, objected and claimed it was confusing the witness. Judge Jackson overruled him, saying "I don't find it confusing". Explorer and Windows welded Microsoft's third and most serious problem arose from its attempt to show that Professor Felten's prototype program to remove IE's browsing capability from Windows 98 could not succeed because IE is welded into Windows 98. The court was shown a Microsoft-produced video demonstration that alleged that Feltenization caused a failure in running Windows. Professor Felten had claimed in December that as a result of some change by Microsoft, the Windows update feature stopped working after his program was run. Microsoft had a copy of the source code of the program, and it was widely believed that Microsoft had found some way to stop it. Microsoft protested its innocence. Professor Felten pointed out that Microsoft could do a much better job of a removal program than he had done in his prototype. Microsoft had even admitted that Dell had been allowed to licence a version of Windows 98 with IE disabled. Video tampering? The video shown in court was not what it purported to be, and in freeze-frame mode it was clear that more than one computer had been used.
Nor did the commentary fit what it was claimed was being seen in the
demonstration.
Judge Jackson, with unprecedented praise, said that "Mr Boies has done a very professional job of discrediting those tapes". It was then decided that the demonstration could be repeated that evening with DoJ witnesses present.
Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray did not help matters by saying that "The first tape was showing ... computers in a studio to illustrate the points that we had discovered in the laboratory." Demonstration shut-out
Professor Felten, his assistants, and attorneys from the DoJ were kept waiting for two hours in the lobby of the offices of Microsoft's lawyers, and were refused entry into the sixth floor conference room overlooking the White House to see the unpacking and setting up of the new computers being used for the repeated demonstration.
At the end of the day, Judge Jackson said he wanted to see counsel in his chambers. It is not known exactly what was discussed, but the indications were that the judge was very concerned at the credibility of Microsoft's witnesses.
Michael Devlin, President of Rational Software Corporation, spent a morning giving evidence for its business partner Microsoft. His support was hardly surprising. Microsoft has only one further non-Microsoft witness, from Compaq.
Graham Lea is a leading computer industry analyst specialising in Microsoft who will be following the case for News Online. |
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