I was unable to find the following on the Internet - it may have been taken
off. Asking around, an acquaintance had it on file, and here is a small
part of it:
Microsoft and Novell: A Misstep? - by Stephen H. Wildstrom (Business
Week Online, 11/09/04)
Novell announced it would file a new private antitrust action charging
that Microsoft illegally restrained trade in the market for
office-productivity software between 1994 and 1996. At the time, Novell
owned word-processing software Word Perfect and Quattro Pro spreadsheet,
programs that competed with Microsoft Office.
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has taken another huge step in what has become
a US$3 billion-plus campaign to rid itself of the legal fallout of its 2002
settlement of an antitrust Latest News about antitrust case brought by the
U.S. government. Gates & Co. agreed on November 11 to pay Novell (Nasdaq:
NOVL) $536 million to resolve claims regarding Novell's NetWare networking
Relevant Products/Services from Sprint -- With Sprint, business is
beautiful. software.
That's a drop in the bucket for Microsoft, which had $37 billion in
annual revenue last year. But over the long haul, the price of the latest
deal, which settles a private antitrust suit brought by Novell and a
complaint by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, could be
more significant than the dollar cost of the settlement.
Earlier Microsoft paid a total of nearly $1.5 billion to settle cases
brought by Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Time Warner's AOL (NYSE: AOL)
unit, and has reserved $1 billion to settle state class-action suits.
$536 million to Novell and $1.5 billion to Sun Microsystems. Like the
article says, that's only "a drop in the bucket for Microsoft", but still,
it's worth thinking about - what is that $1,536,000,000 buying? More
details are in the article - if you can find it!
RM
