ed to compete with Microsoft. Colburn had testified earlier for the government that AOL chose Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser for its online service because Microsoft offered something that Netscape couldn't, promotional space on the dominant Windows operating system desktop. As part of the deal, AOL was allowed to provide only limited promotion of rival Netscape's Internet browser. But all the while that Colburn was testifying last October, AOL was in hush-hush negotiations to buy Netscape and its browser business. The deal was announced last November. Warden tried to make the point that AOL intended to dump its near-exclusive promotion and distribution of Microsoft's browser and substitute its own Netscape product once its contract with Microsoft expired in the year 2000. On Sept. 20,1999, an E-mail from Case indicated that the company was seriously mulling the possibility of dumping Internet Explorer at some point. Case wondered if buying Netscape and committing to migrate to their browser instead would help Microsoft to pull AOL from Windows 98. "My main point is we shouldn't assume we need to or want to maintain IE as primary browser," Case wrote. "Maybe that's the right answer, but maybe not -- we should push down on all possibilities before deciding." 12However, government attorney David Boies stood up and cited rules that he said required Warden to read the E-mail's response. Jackson then ordered Warden to read the response by AOL President Robert Pittman. Pittman's response alluded to Microsoft's power in the marketplace which made it infeasible for AOL to make a change any time soon: "I do think MSFT is too strong to throw them out of the tent -- they can hurt us if they think they have no other option." 13 Indeed, Colburn stuck to his story that the "consensus for a long time" within the company was to stay with Microsoft's browser until the contract expired. And that's what the company has d...
