Gorton Defends Microsoft In Letter To Senate Urges “Balanced, Responsible” Congressional Inquiry
Sen. Slade Gorton Tuesday delivered on the first part of his promised defense of the Microsoft Corp., sending a letter to his fellow 99 senators praising the software giant.
“Microsoft, the quintessential American success story, is suddenly depicted with horns,” Gorton, R-Wash., complained in the letter.
“I write to you today to place Microsoft and its legal proceedings into context, and to urge you to ensure that any future congressional inquiry into competition in the software industry is balanced and responsible.”
Gorton’s letter was prompted by his concern that the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is launching an investigation of the company. Gorton does not believe that Hatch, whose state is home to Microsoft competitor Novell, can be fair to Microsoft.
Gorton used his letter to make four points in defense of the company:
He insisted that the company’s woes are being orchestrated by its competitors.
“I am here to tell you that the change in the company’s appearance has less to do with its business practices than with a strategic courting of the Department of Justice and of Congress by Microsoft’s competitors,” he wrote.
Citing his experience as a former state attorney general, he suggested that the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Microsoft is a misguided attempt “to restrict Microsoft’s ability to produce the full-featured products its consumers demand.”
“There is absolutely no evidence that consumers are being hurt in any way by a lack of competition in the software industry,” he wrote. “On the contrary, the software industry is providing consumers with continually improving products, falling prices, and faster innovation.”
He cited statistics oft-repeated by Microsoft that purport to show that the company is not so big nor so dominant as it has been depicted.
“While Microsoft is an industry leader, its detractors have succeeded in exaggerating its perceived size in order to inflate their claims that the company threatens competition,” he wrote.
He warned that government intervention would be bad for the software industry.
“This dalliance (between Microsoft competitors and company critics in the Justice Department and Congress) is dangerous, not only for Microsoft, but for the entire U.S. computer industry, for our international competitiveness, and ultimately, for consumers.”
The Gorton letter, which he expects to follow up with a speech on the Senate floor later this week, comes as the company is under increasing scrutiny by the Justice Department, Congress and the news media. Today Hatch is to give a speech outlining his thoughts on antitrust law in the digital age before a conference on “Competition, Convergence and the Microsoft Monopoly.”
The conference, expected to be dominated by Microsoft critics, is sponsored by a Washington-based think tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation. In response, an Oakland-based think tank, the Independent Institute, Wednesday staged a competing forum with a group of economists and anti-trust experts sympathetic to Microsoft.
xxxx THE OTHER SIDE Today, Sen. Orrin Hatch is to give a speech outlining his thoughts on antitrust law in the digital age before a conference on “Competition, Convergence and the Microsoft Monopoly.”