The ruling lifts the cloud of breakup over the company," Bill Gates exulted at a press conference last week. Moments later from the same podium, Microsoft spokesman Jeff Raikes echoed: "I'm sure you'll understand, especially if you live in Seattle, the feeling of the sun breaking through the clouds." CEO Steve Ballmer chimed in a short time later, "The sun was definitely shining a little bit in Seattle."
Microsoft's highly repetitive and relentlessly on-message weather report was its way of saying it was delighted, delighted, delighted with last week's appeals-court ruling partly reversing the antitrust verdict against it. The decision clearly...