Microsoft’s staggering profits overshadow the courtroom
fireworks of the antitrust trial’s first week.
In the first week of the Microsoft trial,… the most important
headline was the one that revealed the company’s whopping quarterly
earnings of $1.68 billion — up 58 percent over the previous
year.
In a 1996 meeting with AOL officials, according to an AOL
document Boies presented, Gates asked, “How much do we need to pay
you to screw Netscape? … This is your lucky day.”
As long as the company is in its everyday, crush-all-comers and
conquer-the-world mode, Microsoft pooh-poohs the challenge offered
by Linux, the free operating system beloved by many geeks. But
suddenly, when it’s convenient for its purposes in the antitrust
trial, it’s willing to elevate Linux to the status of
competitor…