indows OS. He went on to say that he hoped to further improve Windows by adding new capabilities, such as speech recognition and machine vision, to it. The Justice Department has several key issues that it has to deal with in its case against Microsoft. By deal with, I mean they have to get around Microsoft’s answers to their charges. First, the department is accusing the company of threatening computer makers who delete the Internet Explorer icon. The company answers this by claiming that “…computer manufacturers are free to ship any competitor product they wish, but they are not allowed to disable features of our products,” (Just Dept v MS 2). Second, the government is contending that the terms of Microsoft’s non-disclosure agreements are an obstacle in the way of their attempts to gather evidence for their investigation. Microsoft says that their non-disclosure agreements are no different than those of most companies within the software industry, as well as outside it. Finally, there is the matter of the competitive browser possibly representing a threat to Microsoft’s key product, its operating system. Company officials claim that by not allowing them to include their browser with Windows, the government is preventing innovation. They say that the pace of the competition will quickly pummel a company that stops innovating, and that the consumers win because competition drives firms to deliver better products at lower prices. In essence, Microsoft is claiming that by not allowing them to include the browser, the government is stifling the competition that it is trying to protect. Orin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held the first of what he claimed would be several hearings on the Microsoft antitrust petition in the first week of November. At this hearing, the Senator produced an exclusivity agreement between Microsoft and Earthlink Network, Inc. It called for Earthlink to offer...
