Microsoft Excuses Don’t Click With Judge He Does In 90 Seconds What Software Giant Says It Can’t

A federal court judge told Microsoft on Friday that he was able to accomplish what the computer giant says it has been unable to do - remove the software manufacturer’s Internet Explorer browser from Windows 95.

And, as if that wasn’t good enough, District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said it could be done in 90 seconds, without any fancy equipment and with no effect on the operating system.

“If the process is that simple, I would like to have it confirmed by the government,” Jackson said. “If it is not, I want it refuted by Microsoft.”

Jackson’s comments came at the end of a brief hearing during which he scheduled arguments Jan. 13 on a Justice Department motion asking that Microsoft be found in contempt and fined $1 million a day for violating one of the judge’s earlier orders in an antitrust lawsuit.

In a preliminary injunction issued last week, Jackson ordered Microsoft to stop requiring computer manufacturers to distribute Internet Explorer as a condition for installing Windows 95 in their machines.

The key to the case is whether, as the federal government claims, it is easy to separate the browser from Windows 95, or whether, as Microsoft claims, it can’t be removed without damaging the operating system.

Jackson’s experiment seemed to catch lawyers for both sides off guard.

The judge said he watched as the court’s computer technical adviser used a process called “uninstall” to eliminate Internet Explorer from Windows. Jackson made it sound easy to follow the step-by-step instructions.

“Windows 95 functioned flawlessly (without Internet Explorer), as it was intended to operate,” Jackson said. “I was also given a demonstration of how it (Internet Explorer) could be reloaded in approximately the same amount of time.”

Microsoft attorneys had nothing to say after Jackson revealed his experiment.

But after the hearing, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s associate general counsel, sought to downplay its impact.

“This is a program (Windows) with 14 million lines of code, and you simply can’t slice and dice it with a legal meat clever,” Smith said,

Microsoft insists that it was ordered to remove the entire program and all of its attendant files, known as dynamic link libraries, or DLL files. This is far more complicated because several programs often share one of more DLL files.

Government lawyers declined comment.

However, an attorney for Netscape, one of Microsoft’s chief rivals in the Internet browser market, said Microsoft had suffered a blow as a result of Jackson’s comments.

“He (Jackson) clearly understands uninstall is not as difficult as Microsoft would have you believe,” said Christine Varney, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and former member of the Federal Trade Commission working for Netscape.

In scheduling the January hearing, Jackson said each side would be able to present only one witness to present technical and other evidence.

Jackson also said he would have to be careful how he handled the government’s request to find Microsoft in contempt because it had already appealed his preliminary injunction.

“Because of the appeal, I am limited to the four corners of the injunction,” the judge said. “I can’t alter it; I can’t expand it. The issue is whether it had been violated.”

The Justice Department said Microsoft had violated the injunction when it told computer manufacturers they had only two choice - install a version of Windows 95 that was more than two years old or install a version that would not work because the Internet browser had been removed.

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