It Hurts To Break Up What You Build

Bill Gates, the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, can be described

in several ways. He is still the richest man though the value of his stock has come down

some 30 percent since Judge Jackson ordered his company to be broken into two.

Gates is a brave man. During the last two years when his company was

tossed into a legal storm, he kept his cool, asking his men to concentrate on the job that

they do best: develop and sell world-class software.

But this bravery received a knock for a moment a day after the break-up

order came. While distributing scholarships to needy students in the US, overcome with

emotions, Gates choked mid-sentence. His eyes were full of tears.

It hurts to break up what you build.

At a human level, we empathize with Gates because beginning in that

garage, working together with Paul Allen, he took great pains and showed immense

leadership to build a highly successful software company.

But just as we had observed in one of our earlier editorials on the

subject, success has its own pitfalls.

Judge Jackson has found that Microsoft, under the direction of Gates

has competed unfairly. The company has tried to snuff out competition before it had a

chance to challenge Microsoft's market power. The examples are there for all to see, be it

the DR-DOS operating system, Netscape Browser, or Sun's Java software.

Going by Jackson's order, Gates will have to make a decision on the

company that he wants to join, whether it is the operating systems company or the

applications company. Analysts say that he may not want to join any of the companies at

all. Instead, seek retirement.

But there is a long way to go before this turn of events comes about.

Microsoft is fighting every inch of the legal battle. Its immediate

mission is to stop the case going directly to the Supreme Court for a review. By all

means, Microsoft would like the case to go through Appeals Court, where it had scored a

victory against one of Jackson's earlier verdicts.

And it looks as though Microsoft has already achieved its mission to

some extent. Its lawyers almost simultaneously filed their notice of appeal to the

break-up order with Jackson. But before Jackson even had a chance to fully review the

notice of appeal motion, Microsoft had already filed the stay motion with the Appeals

Court.

Usually the Appeals Court takes at least a week to review appeals

request. But in Microsoft's case, the court accepted the case within minutes. This

momentarily put off government efforts to take the case directly to the Supreme Court.

But now government lawyers say that the decision of the Appeals Court

to hear Microsoft's stay motion will be meaningless if next week Jackson rules that he

wants to send the case to the Supreme Court. According to legal experts, Jackson's right

to send the case directly to the highest court of the US supercedes the jurisdiction of

the Appeals Court.

Thus, the legal wrangle is going to continue for a long time to come.

In the meanwhile, Gates, his people and their organization will be in the limelight for

believing what they do is right while the law-enforcing authorities think the opposite.