Microsoft Fails To End Antitrust Oversight
Microsoft’s hope that years of antitrust oversight would finally come to an end proved premature, as U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled today that the company would still have to abide by the 2002 settlement until November 12, 2009, two years after it was originally supposed to expire.
The last several months have seen multiple state governments and Microsoft competitors asking for another five years of government oversight, while Microsoft and some allies argued that the marketplace had changed and was far more competitive than three years ago, and that the settlement should expire on its original end date. The ruling, while not exactly what Microsoft wanted, does represent a good compromise and signals an eventual end to the paralyzing effect the antitrust decree has had on some Microsoft engineers.
