Gates Testifies To Senate Committee

The Senate Judiciary Committee brought Bill Gates, and some of his most vocal competitors, to Washington for a theatrical exchange in a room packed with the mass media, staff, and spectators.  The four hour hearing on Microsoft's competitive practices was held in the largest Senate hearing room.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

• Bill Gates, President and CEO of Microsoft Corp., a vendor of PC operating system software, and other software products, and defendant in Department of Justice v. Microsoft.
• Jim Barksdale, President and CEO of Netscape Communications, the vendor of Netscape Navigator, which is losing market share to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
• Scot McNealy, President and CEO Sun Microsystems.   Sun has brought a civil suit against Microsoft based on trademark law over Microsoft's use of java programming language.   Sun's Solaris workstation products are being threatened by the growing success of Microsoft's NT server software.
• Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Computer Corp.
• Doug Burgum, Great Plains Software.
• Stewart Alsop, New Enterprise Associates.
• Orrin Hatch, other Senators, attendants, photographers, camermen, reporters, and citizens.

Bill Gates smiled a lot, said Microsoft makes really good software, and is not a monopoly.

His disgruntled competitors, Barksdale and McNealy, and Hatch, sternly declared that Microsoft is a monopoly.

No one on the witness panel advocated enactment of any new laws.

Until now, the computer and internet industry has not been active in Washington money politics, and both the Congress and the federal bureacracy have left the computer and internet industry relatively unregulated.