An article published April 16 in PC World, http://www.pcworld.com/article/163277/doj_asks_for_extension_of_microsoft_antitrust_judgment.html?tk=rss_news, states that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked to extend the antitrust agreement against Microsoft by at least 18 months (May 2011), to give the company enough time to fix problems in technical documentation required in a communications protocols licensing program.
The antitrust order was originally scheduled to expire November 2007, then was extended through November 2009 due to complaints about the state of the technical documentation. Interesting here is that in 2007, the DOJ opposed an extension of the entire judgment but now they are asking to extend it.
Microsoft is not commenting on the request for an extension, but did point to the DOJ and state plaintiffs’ statements in their status report that the company has made significant progress in fixing bugs in the documentation, and that the project is nearly complete.
The DOJ’s request for an extension may have additional significance. Today, my local paper ran a story that Christine Varney, current head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, will announce a reversal to Bush administration policies that will restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations using market dominance to “elbow out competitors or keep them from gaining market share.” This would restore a policy that led to the antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s, and more closely align American antitrust policy on monopolies and predatory practices with the views of antitrust regulators at the European Commission. And we all know how tough the EC has been on Microsoft in the past few years; they’ve also just announced fines on Intel even higher than those imposed on Microsoft!
The policy change is expected to be bad news for heavyweights in the tech industries such as Google as well as Microsoft. Individuals who have spoken to Varney say she is aiming at agriculture, energy, health care, technology, and telecommunications companies. She may also be reviewing the conduct of some in the financial services industry.
