What are the stakes today for Microsoft?
In a word, huge. The judge could order Microsoft to produce an unbundled version of Windows, free of applications other than the operating system. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says unbundling is impossible and that he will pull Windows off the market if that’s the remedy. But the judge could rule in Microsoft’s favor by backing the U.S.-brokered settlement and rejecting the remedies sought by the nonsettling states. Q: What are the judge’s choices? A: The judge is considering starkly different remedy plans. The first is a settlement reached last fall between Microsoft and the Bush administration and nine of the 18 states. The nine states that rejected that settlement filed their own remedy plan. The U.S.-led settlement is, in effect, the baseline — the minimum remedy that Microsoft faces. The judge must decide whether the nonsettling states, in the three-month-long remedy hearing that ended in June, successfully made a case for penalties that exceed that settlement. Q: What does the
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