Bush Administration Stops Microsoft Breakup

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had been instructed by the Bush Administration to cease its drive to break up Microsoft, which has already been found guilty of violating U.S. anti-trust law in a complaint filed by the Federal Government and 19 states. See the BBC or CNN for more. It isn't clear what wristslap, errr, remedy the Justice Department will seek instead. Update: 09/06 15:21 PM GMT by M : Declan McCullagh of Wired notes: "The text of the DOJ announcement is here. Wired News has an article. Also, the DOJ says a 'Senior Antitrust Division Official' will brief reporters at the department's DC headquarters at 11:30 am ET, so look for some followup stories from that."

Comments

Wait a minute...

[ASCIIMan]

Where does this say Bush was the reason for stopping the MS breakup? I see a reference to the Bush administration, but I assume that means someone he appointed (ie John Ashcroft) is the person who "Stop[ped] the Microsoft Breakup".

ray of hope

[davey23sol]

The article that I first saw on CNet said that this announcement was *ONLY* the Justice Department and that this did *NOT* represent the wished of the individual states.

The newest CNet article is unclear, saying that the Justice Department and the States and the Judge will all meet over the next two weeks.

There might be a chance that the states won't go along with this. The Attorneys General of the states tend to be more progressive in consumer protection.

exactly

[Trepidity]

From the NY Times article:

The antitrust official said the decision announced today was not connected to the introduction of the Windows XP system. He said Attorney General John D. Ashcroft had been notified of the decision but had not influenced the outcome. The official said there had been no White House involvement. "The decisions about this case are being made in the Department of Justice," he said.

Now you might speculate that they're lying, and that Bush actually did order this action, but to report so as fact is clearly very poor journalism.

Guys, you're missing the point.

[rjh]

Really. The point is not that Bush is letting Microsoft off the hook--he's not. The Bush administration (important to remember that) is saying, ``we don't think a breakup is called for, we want to see conduct remedies instead''.

This is not necessarily a bad idea. In fact, Tom Miller, the Iowa attorney general who has been one of the biggest movers in the states' suit against Microsoft, has agreed with the Bush administration's decision on this matter.

When even the most aggressive of all the state AGs agrees that ``conduct remedies are enough, they'll do'', what in God's name are the rest of you mewling about?

Let's also note that the Bush administration is no longer pushing for a breakup. That doesn't mean a breakup won't happen, because in the end, it is the judge hearing the case who gets to decide what action is necessary to restore competition to the marketplace. If the judge in question thinks a breakup is called for, well, it doesn't matter a damn what the Bush administration or the states want--Microsoft will be broken up.

This is, realistically, not news.