Kevin Murphy, a University of Chicago economics and industrial
relations professor, returned to the witness stand yesterday for
his second day of testimony in the remedy phase of the Microsoft
antitrust trial, where he faced tough questioning about his
company's links with Microsoft.
Murphy's written statement had argued that antitrust remedies
should be limited to the company's misdeeds and its illegal
maintenance of its operating system monopoly - a monopoly
reaffirmed by the US Court of Appeals last June. There is no
economic justification for the broader remedies sought by the nine
nonsettling states and the District of Columbia, Murphy said.
However, states' attorney Steven Kuney established in his
questioning that Murphy had written little, if anything, about the
software industry until his company, Chicago Partners, was hired by
Microsoft four or five years ago.
Kuney read off a series of papers Murphy wrote about the software
market since that relationship with Microsoft began and, in each
case, the witness acknowledged that the papers were at least partly
funded by Microsoft.
Much of Murphy's testimony was intended to support the assertion
that there is no "causal link" between the precipitous market share
decline of Netscape's Navigator browser and Microsoft's illegal
monopoly.
But Kuney pulled out evidence, originally introduced at the trial,
showing that Microsoft viewed Navigator as a platform threat to its
Windows operating system.
Murphy said that at the time of those assessments by Microsoft, its
chairman, Bill Gates, had said that there's "a lot of money at
stake" and that he was "going to get excited" about things that
have a chance.
Murphy argued that looking back at events from today's perspective
presents "a very different picture".
The next witness for Microsoft is expected to be Scott Borduin, a
vice-president and chief technology officer of Autodesk, which
makes PC design software and multimedia tools.