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.