Microsoft Settles Be Antitrust Suit for $23.25M

ewhac writes "Without admitting wrongdoing, Microsoft today agreed to pay $23,250,000 to Be, Inc., to settle anti-trust claims against the software giant. The payout is anticipated to be used to complete the orderly dissolution of the company. Shortly after announcing sale of key assets to Palm, Be, Inc., filed suit against Microsoft in February 2002, alleging destruction of its business via illegal exclusionary and anti-competitive business practices."

Comments

Microsoft Owns yahoo?

[MyDixieWrecked]

The ending paragraph of that article is disturbing to say the least. Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device. pshhhh... right. ;)

Now that's justice...

[fork420]

To put this in perspective, consider the following math:

$8,072,000,000 net income for MSFT during the 9 months ended 3/31/03
divided by the (roughly) 270 days during the 9 months ended 3/31/03
...yields $29,000,000 net income per day for MSFT

so basically they destroyed Be, Inc., and it cost them roughly 18 *hours* of income.

just lovely :-/

Does little to improve OS diversity

[Shinzaburo]

It's great that Be's shareholders get a few dollars back for their pains, but they still certainly didn't come out ahead. But the real tragedy isn't the way about the investors -- it's about the millions of people who could have benefited from Be's amazing and innovative software, had Be been allowed to compete on anything remotely resembling a level playing field.

Hopefully more and more of Be's innovations will end up in Mac OS X and Linux. Then Be's achievements won't have been for naught.

Re:MS employee karma

[pitr256]

This is so true of most emplyees who work at Microsoft. I myself worked there for about three months in a sysadmin support type function and even with the Code Red outbreak crashing the internal Microsoft network to the point where even the call center couldn't route calls to support agents, they kept saying, "Microsoft is the greatest! Damn hackers did this."

I got the fscking out of there before being assimilated.