AOL files antitrust suit against Microsoft

Everbody and their brother will be blogging and commenting on this lawsuit over the coming minutes, weeks, years. Key thing to note is that this is the other half of the Department of Justice case, the private half. After all, the DOJ is alleging that MS caused damages to citizens and other companies and the court has agreed with them (at this point, the only remaining question is the remedy). There is also a consumer-level class action suit against MS which was almost settled with a big donation to schools but the judge realized the settlement was a poorly-disguised attempt by Gates and Co. to take over one of the few market segments they don’t yet control and rejected it. Now AOL TW, as the successor to Netscape, is filing suit and I expect others to follow. This whole mess is far fom over. If the solution was simply money Microsoft would settle in a heartbeat with the almost $40 billion cash they hold but of course all the plaintiffss want behavioural remedies, which Gates can’t stomach. Expect to be reading about this for years and years.