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The Microsoft Trial

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from: Seth Stevenson

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998, at 9:30 PM ET

Seth Stevenson is an assistant editor at Slate.



Day 24 of the Trial



My goodness but journalists are shlubs. Clearly I've chosen the wrong profession. Just look around at the poor slobs sitting with me in the press section of the courtroom. Pocked faces. Dreadful postures. Unfortunate hair. Rodential tics. And the sad way they grip their undersized notebooks, jotting down every last detail as the government describes flow measures of Netscape market share!

Granted, I'm no Omar Sharif, but it's hard not to notice the severe lack of style displayed by the trial press corps. Even the spectators, the regular Joes who sit in the unreserved courtroom seats, at least keep themselves together--matching clothes, brushed hair, a modicum of lint and wrinkle vigilance applied to suits.

And then there are the courtroom artists, casually yet snappily attired, with the certain flair one expects from creative types. I long to be one of them. The courtroom artists sit serenely in the comfy leather chairs of the jury box, sketching away, chatting with each other, pleasant looks on their faces. The female courtroom artist uses opera glasses for a better view of the proceedings, and the barrel lenses make her look like a cyborg. I wonder who decides which courtroom artists work which trials. Do certain judges prefer certain courtroom artists for the way they bring out a jutting judicial jaw or discreetly add a pinch of thatch to a proud but thinning judicial pate?

The whole of the morning session is given over, once again, to government witness Frederick Warren-Boulton. Warren-Boulton, an economist, defends his thesis that Microsoft does indeed possess a monopoly. His testimony seems solid. And exhaustive. But, through no fault of his own, it makes the same point over and over again. Microsoft lawyer Michael Lacovara keeps pressing Warren-Boulton to say that, damn it, Netscape just wasn't a very good company and that's why it lost. But Warren-Boulton won't give in.

The interesting part comes when Warren-Boulton gets caught in a corner as Lacovara asks him about the America Online-Netscape merger. Warren-Boulton has to maintain both that Netscape was a good company that lost out to Microsoft because of monopoly tactics, not incompetence, and that AOL's acquisition of Netscape won't create a partnership so strong as to break Microsoft's monopoly altogether. He ends up saying that AOL made a bet on Netscape that he wouldn't have made, were he a betting man. Lacovara picks up on that right away, noting that AOL made a $4.3 billion bet.

After the brief excitement, the government lawyer moves on to corrections of typos in transcripts of Warren-Boulton's past testimony. My press colleagues faithfully record every minor change in every footnote, while I find myself finding it funnier and funnier that Warren-Boulton's last name sounds like a first name and a last name. I start dreamily superimposing trial proceedings onto lines from Shakespeare ("But Microsoft, what light through yonder WindowsTM breaks?"). I compose a few haiku (Microsoft lawyer/ Who operates your system?/ Cross-examine life!). I try to pen The Love Song of D.O.J. Alfred Prufrock ("In the courtroom the lawyers come and go/ Talking of IE 4.0 ... Netscape gets sold ... Netscape gets sold .../ It shall share the items in its browser's code").

At the end of the day, Warren-Boulton is finally and mercifully released from his indenture. On to Java.

Click here for MSNBC's full coverage of trial developments.

For more Slate coverage of the AOL-Netscape deal, see "What's in Netscape for AOL?" and "Antitrust Mania."

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from: Seth Stevenson

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998, at 9:30 PM ET
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Michael Lewis is the author of several books, most recently, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Herbert Stein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He died in September 1999. Seth Stevenson shops for Slate. Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate. Jodie T. Allen, former Washington editor of Slate, is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report. Jonathan Rauch is a senior writer for National Journal and a writer-in-residence at the Brookings Institution. Kate Galbraith was formerly an assistant editor at Slate. Jack Shafer is Slate's editor-at-large. William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent. David Plotz is Slate's Washington editor. Jodi Kantor, a former Slate New York editor, edits the New York Times' "Arts & Leisure" section. Kenly Webster, a former federal prosecutor, specializes in litigation at Shaw Pittman Potts & Trowbridge, where he is a senior counsel.
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