Key DoJ witness claims Explorer is bad for users

Microsoft lumbered many organisations with unwanted Internet Explorer (IE) browser software by including it with its Windows operating system, according to the latest witness testifying in the US Department of Justice (DoJ) anti-trust case against Microsoft.

As the landmark case entered its fifth week, technical expert witness Glenn Weadock, president of Independent Software, took the stand to declare that the integration of IE into Microsoft's operating system is bad for customers.

Weadock - who has written a dozen books on Windows - produced written testimony detailing the problems Microsoft had caused by including IE with Windows 95 and Windows 98.

He said many organisations had spent a lot of money getting IE off their PCs or standardising on an original version of Windows 95, which did not come with the browser. Others moving to Windows 98 have faced the frustration of not being able to choose not to have IE.

Weadock's testimony is crucial to the DoJ's case, in which the US government is trying to prove the software giant used its dominance in operating systems to gain advantage in the browser market.

Microsoft will have to explain to the judge comments made by its executives, including 'cutting off their (Netscape's) air supply'; how a 'polluted' version of Java is a 'better' one; and how manufacturers it signs deals with are still free to use someone else's operating system.

Last week, Intel vice president Steve McGeady was cross-examined by Microsoft, which accused him of embellishing handwritten notes used as evidence in the case.

The company also claimed McGeady fabricated damaging accounts of what Microsoft executives told him in key 1995 meetings, and gave confidential Microsoft information to rival Netscape Communications.

His testimony was played off against videotaped evidence from another Intel executive, Ronald Whittier, which seemed to contradict many of his statements.

Microsoft's lawyer Steven Holley said McGeady was angry at the software giant because Intel had dropped an internet project he was to head up, after pressure from Microsoft.

Holley also cited a McGeady email which discussed Microsoft and made references to the Rolling Stones' song Sympathy for the Devil. He suggested this showed McGeady saw Microsoft as the devil.

Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates broke his silence on US breakfast television to accuse the government of deliberately excluding him from the trial so it could manipulate his pre-trial testimony.

Gates defended his much-criticised videotaped pre-trial testimony, which showed him as sullen and sometimes evasive, and said emails used as evidence had been selectively chosen.

'The fact there's some email at Microsoft that says: let's go beat up this guy ... that is capitalism at work for the consumers,' Gates retorted.