Documents detailing Microsoft's hardball tactics bring into sharp focus a PC company's worst nightmare: alienating the Redmond empire.
On Monday, the Justice Department filed testimony from Compaq Computer, Gateway 2000, and Micron Electronics demonstrating that all three companies were required to carry the Internet Explorer browser as a condition of licensing Windows 95. Two of those companies now say it was the superiority of its products--rather than alleged threats by Microsoft--that drove them to make their decision.
Micron chairman and chief executive Joe Daltoso issued a statement yesterday that a declaration made by a manager at his company did not constitute a complaint about Microsoft. And John Rose, a senior vice president at Compaq, told the Wall Street Journal that it was customer demand, not a Microsoft letter threatening to terminate its Windows 95 license, that drove his company to offer Internet Explorer exclusively on the boxes it sold.
"[PC vendors] work on the assumption that keeping good relations with Microsoft is a top priority," said Dwight Davis, editorial director at Windows Watcher, a publication that follows the industry. "Clearly, some of these people who have had their dirty laundry [with Microsoft] aired are doing all they can to smoothe things over. There's sort of revisionist history going on on both sides right now."
"Micron is in somewhat of a precarious position as an up and coming second-tier vendor," said Roger Kay, a computer analyst at International Data Corporation. "They are not in a sufficiently established position that they can do much swaggering."