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Unless that happens, there's a lot more bad news yet to come Gates' way. Jackson still has to issue conclusions of law--expected early next year--in which he'll use these facts to decide if Microsoft used its monopoly power to violate the antitrust laws. Assuming he says yea--a near certainty considering Friday's findings--he can impose a remedy as far-reaching as the total dismemberment of the Gates empire. And more potential bad news: these findings of fact could be used by a host of competitors to bring their own civil antitrust actions against Microsoft. The reverberations will be felt for some time throughout the high-tech world--and by the tens of millions of Americans who have a stake in this battle because they own Microsoft stock. (For what this means to investors, see Dan Kadlec's Personal Time column.)
The finding that Microsoft is a monopoly was a legal no-brainer, once the court accepted the government's narrow definition of the relevant market: PC operating-systems software. If Microsoft--which owns more than 90% of that market--isn't a monopoly, then nobody is. Microsoft tried to argue that its Windows operating system was under constant threat and could be made obsolete at any moment. But the competitors it listed hardly seemed like giant killers. Upstart Linux, the open-source operating system that Microsoft speaks of so fearfully, currently runs less than 3% of all PCs. Even if you include Apple, which is undeniably on an upswing, Microsoft still has more than 80% of the PC market. Jackson wasn't buying any of it.
The ruling goes on to detail the ways in which Microsoft used its monopoly power to bludgeon the competition. If you liked the trial, you'll love the judge's greatest-hits collection of Microsoft skulduggery: binding its Internet Explorer browser into Windows just to beat out Netscape, bullying Intel into staying out of the software market, polluting Sun Microsystems' Java programming language to diminish the competitive threat it posed to Windows, threatening IBM. And Compaq. And Apple.
Microsoft likes to say its hypercompetitive business practices hurt rivals, not consumers. But Jackson found that Microsoft was so quick to crush any perceived threats that countless technology products that should have been developed died stillborn. "The ultimate result," he wrote, "is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest." Even more devastating, Jackson found that in its rush to make life tough for its competitors, Microsoft was actually willing to diminish the quality of its own products. Bundling a Web browser into Windows 98 did not benefit consumers, as Microsoft claimed. Rather, Jackson found, it slowed down the operating system, increased the likelihood of a crash and made it easier for "malicious viruses" to find their way from the Internet onto our computers. Ouch.
What do these thousands of facts add up to? More than likely an architectural blueprint for finding that Microsoft did indeed willfully and repeatedly violate the Sherman Antitrust Act. In their Friday-night spinathon, Microsoft's legal experts hastened to point out that this conclusion is not a certainty. In fact, the judge could still find that the mountains of incriminating evidence he laid out don't support a legal ruling against Microsoft. But don't bet on it.