The US Justice Department’s top antitrust official is to meet with Microsoft Corp representatives Friday to discuss a possible new antitrust case against ‘Big Green,’ according to Reuters. If the DoJ is going to land a new case on Redmond’s door step it needs to act swiftly as Microsoft is due to send its Windows 98 product to manufacturing by mid-May. We don’t see what all the fuss is about. The DoJ has already forced Microsoft to offer an OEM version of Windows 95 with the internet access technology unactivated. Why should its treatment of Windows 98, in which internet features are even more closely bound, be any different? If a new case takes aim at other Microsoft business practices then that’s different. Reuters didn’t say. However the New York Times says industry executives have approached the Justice Department with 10 proposals they believe would help rein in the monopoly power of Microsoft. The proposals include forcing Microsoft to divest its applications businesses from its operating-system business and establishing a monitoring system to track Microsoft’s business practices.
