ment about extending monopolies is inapplicable to Microsoft's case. Microsoft doesn't charge anything for Product B, Internet Explorer. Of course, the company benefits from giving it away. Microsoft wants to make it easy for computer manufacturers to install the browser so that PC buyers will use Windows applications instead of software written for Netscape Navigator and will use goods and services sold over the Internet by Microsoft and its partners. Is this monopolistic? No more so than a shopping mall owner's providing free parking and then collecting higher rents from retailers that value the increased shopping. In buying Netscape, was AOL gunning for Microsoft? For months, Microsoft Corp. thought it had a late-breaking piece of evidence that would save the software giant from the government's antitrust noose: The three-way deal announced late last year among America Online, Netscape Communications, and Sun Microsystems. The alliance proved that Microsoft faced formidable competition, Microsoft lawyers contended. 11 There was great anticipation in the courtroom on June 14 when Microsoft recalled AOL Senior Vice-President David Colburn to the stand as a hostile rebuttal witness. For hours, Microsoft attorney John Warden pressed Colburn to concede that AOL had secret plans all along to take on Microsoft in the Internet browser business. But by the end of the day, the line of questioning didn't seem to help Microsoft's case appreciably. Even U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson told Warden in a bench discussion that he didn't quite see the value of the new testimony. Jackson suggested that, since Colburn hadn't seen some of the key documents that Warden was putting before him, that Microsoft might want to call a witness who was familiar with them. That would be AOL chief executive Steve Case, a prospect that failed to enthrall Microsoft, since Case was already on record saying that he never intend...
