babbage's Journal: Be or not Be

According to Macworld UK, Be, Inc. has settled its antitrust suit against Microsoft for $23 million. Microsoft, typically, admits no wrongdoing in the settlement. Readers may recall that Be, maker of the BeOS operating system, brought their suit against the Microsoft back in February 2002. At the time this suit was brought, it was becoming obvious that the US government's antitrust suit against Microsoft was not going to result in any significant punishment for the convicted monopolist. Some observers felt Be's claims that Microsoft's vendor contracts excluded competitors from the market was a stronger case than the browser bundling aspect that the US department of justice pursued, but in the end it seems that Be no longer had the resources to complete the trial. With this case abandoned, the best hopes for a remedy to the Microsoft monopoly now seem to be in the European courts, or with a possible regime change in the USA in 2005.