Watts Online

October 27, 1998

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West staff
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Watch the MS case

IT IS so easy to find anti-Bill Gates sites on the Web. Simply type the words "Bill Gates is evil" in the window of a search engine and a torrent of criticism will be revealed. You will find, very quickly, Micro$oft is Evil and Must be Destroyed; the Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock; Why Bill Gates is Richer than You, and Evil Genius Gates Drops Windows 98 Into NYC Water Supply.

Many of the sites are well researched and written. How to Become as Rich as Bill Gates, for example, is a masterpiece of cynicism. It advises Gates wannabes to choose rich parents, go to exclusive schools and let others (like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen) do the hard work.

Equally easy to find are pro-Bill Gates sites, which praise the world's richest man for innovation and vision. The company's press release site always finds laudatory articles about its boss, particularly in times as troubling as these when Microsoft is defending itself against the US Justice Department and 20 States.

They allege that Microsoft used its monopoly in personal computer operating systems (it controls 90 per cent of the market) to thwart rivals and dominate the market for Internet browser software. The central charge is that Microsoft -- secure with a rich income from its Windows operating system -- gave away its Internet Explorer Web browser to deprive Netscape of income from its own flagship product, Navigator.

Explorer -- which can be used as the engine to drive Windows95 and 98 -- is eroding Netscape's share of the browser market, which in 1995 was as much as 84 per cent. It is now closing on a 50-50 share. The outcome of the anti-trust trial, which began last week, will have major repercussions for all PC users. According to The Economist, it will shape the information industry for the next century.

How simple, then, is it to follow the trial on the Web; a trial which HotWired reported last week had by its third day driven popular press coverage away because of its technological complications?

Actually it is easy.

Rather than aim for the cheap and petty way out and seek anti-Gates, anti-Microsoft sites; have a look at the San Jose Mercury's Virtual Courtroom. A clever graphic of the courtroom is presented. All the major players -- the judge, press coverage, the evidence -- are presented as links which when clicked open pages that tell the story quickly and simply. Although there is no jury, the Virtual Courtroom has a link that allows surfers to deliver their own verdicts in an interactive forum. Running commentaries and essential daily coverage are also provided.

The Economist has no daily look at the trial, but has an excellent feature full of links explaining the issues and featuring a long defence by Mr Gates himself. It also includes surfers' reaction to the Gates article and the respected journal's own opinion of it.

The Policy.com site is packed with all the resources needed to make sense of the trial's complexities. It includes links to the actual charges made by the US Government and the States, as well as long analyses by Microsoft and other computer industry titans.

Once you have sampled the issues about browser markets, why not download Netscape's latest version 4.5, and see how it is getting into the spirit of competition. The new Navigator can be configured to steal Internet Explorer settings and even override some of its functions . . . just as Explorer does.

The battle is getting dirty.

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