Microsoft suffered a number of embarrassing, and potentially
damaging trip-ups during its antitrust trial last week. On numerous
occasions, the government's lead attorney was able to expose
serious inaccuracies in the software giant's videotaped deposition
that the Judge himself said cast serious doubts on the tape's
credibility as evidence. But perhaps the most serious slip up was the
admission, by a Microsoft official late Thursday, that the original
video, which purported to show a live demonstration of lab tests, was
actually just an edited "illustration." During his four-day
cross examination, Jim Allchin, Redmonds' senior VP and technical
expert, adamantly insisted that the original videotape was a live
replica of tests he had done to show that the Windows 98 operating
system was impaired once the browser functionality had been removed.
Only after DOJ attorney David Boies was able to show inaccuracies in
the video's production - suggesting the company hadn't run the
removal program and had used more than one computer to carry out the
tests - was Microsoft ordered by Judge Jackson to redo the tests under
supervised conditions. Boies had issues with the way Redmond had
carried out the tests, but both he, and the Judge, believed they were
performed during a live demonstration. Yet, in a dramatic revelation
during a press conference at the end of Allchin's final day of
cross examination, a Microsoft official, Mark Murray was forced to
admit that the original video "was using computers in a studio to
illustrate the point that we had discovered in the laboratory," and
was not, in fact, a live demonstration at all, as the company had
claimed time and time again. The admission came about after intense
press questioning over the company's new videotape and the fact
that it excluded a crucial speed test that Redmond claimed proved that
separating the browser from Windows 98 slows down the performance of the
OS. In the original video, the narrator performing the test highlighted
the fact that it "is taking a very long time....unusually
long" to load certain pages after IE had been removed. If the
technicians had been able to show the degradation in the first tape,
why then, didn't they carry out the same test the second time
round? Murray tried to mumble something about having to carry out the
speed tests in laboratory conditions, but reporters were quick to
remind him that Redmond had already stated the original tests
weren't performed in a lab, yet they showed the speed degradation
clearly. It wasn't until one reporter piped up and asked whether
the first tape had been a "dramatization" or an "actual
demonstration" that he was forced to admit the truth. Having
inaccuracies in the videotape is one thing, but admitting the video was
nothing more than a dramatic re-enactment of what it claims happened in
a laboratory is another altogether; it effectively amounts to
falsifying evidence. It remains to be seen what Judge Jackson will
think when court reconvenes today. When it does, Microsoft's
William Poole, senior director of business development for Windows,
will take the stand. Poole is expected to argue that Microsoft's
special cross-licensing deals with internet content providers were not
intended to cut off distribution outlets for Netscape Communications
Corp.
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