The Dept. of Justice is Hiding the TruthWashington, DC -- Ever since the trustbusters brought their case against Microsoft, we've seen nothing but negative press about so-called "smoking guns" -- excerpts from internal emails among MS executives. These pithy, incriminating documents make for some great reading and even more sensationalistic headlines, but Microsoft has said on more than one occasion: "Whoa there, these are *excerpts* that were taken out of context. When the entire documents come out in court, they won't be so bad. In fact."
Microsoft execs, who actually wrote the memos, declined to elaborate, so we sent 3MR moles into the Justice Dept. to get the entire unedited story. To our surprise, Microsoft had indeed been wronged by the Power of the Excerpt. Here is the whole context of the memos [shown inside of brackets], while the DOJ's misleading excerpts are in "quotations."
Internal MS document titled "Strategic Objective":
[We would never ever in our wildest imaginations ever consider the idea to] "Kill cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java market." [Instead let's hope that cross-platform Java will help us learn the wonders of open computing. As for pollution, we should really focus on cleaning up the environment.]
Feb. 24, 1997, email from MS' Christian Wildfeuer:
"It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser share on the merits of IE 4 alone. [But I said it 'seems' clear. What is clearer is that IE 4 is a great innovative product that should really get by on its merits.] "It will be more important to leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator." [By leverage, I simply mean we should integrate new features like browsers and other cool new features we never thought of before. I respect Navigator as a great product, and feel we should compete fairly with Netscape.]
July 1996 Bill Gates email about persuading Intuit to use IE:
[I think I'm the right person to play Don Carleone in the upcoming Microsoft campus production of 'The Godfather.' Listen to me delivering this classic line:] "I was quite frank with Intuit CEO Scott Cook that if he had a favor we could do for him that would cost us something like $1M to do that in return for switching browsers in the next few months I would be open to doing that." [Otherwise, he'd wake up with the severed head of an I.R.S. agent in his bed the next morning.]
Sept. 17, 1997, email from Microsoft's P. Sridharan:
"Screw Sun. Cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." [I'm sorry. Did I write 'screw Sun'? I meant to say *oooo* Sun, that company's full of great ideas like cross-platform Java. We should really license the Java language and not tamper with it.]
Jan. 2, 1997, email from MS VP James Allchin to MS VP Paul Maritz:
[As for the Seattle Sonics' chance to win an NBA championship:] "I do not feel we are going to win on our current path. [Maybe we should fire the coach. As for getting more air into our offices,] "I am convinced we have to use Windows -- this is the one thing they don't have." [If we move more workers into window offices and out of cubicles, this could work.]
When this all comes out in court, the DOJ will really have egg on their faces...
********** DeathRace 2000(tm)
[each week we'll highlight the lowlights at one of three failing online ventures: Snap!, HotWired and Slate]
HotWired Seeing Paltry Portion of Web Traffic
Internet World reported this week that Wired Digital -- which includes HotBot, HotWired, Wired News and other assorted sites -- had 5.9 million unique visitors in April. The search engine HotBot had 5.2 million alone, leaving a tiny 700K visitors among the rest of the sites. This doesn't bode well for HotWired, which has "become primarily a 'how-to' center for Web developers," according to the article. With HotBot getting the lion's share of traffic (and advertiser attention), that could leave other Wired Digital properties in also-ran status.
In unrelated self-congratulatory news, 3MR's DeathRace 2000 won a "Best of the Bay" award from the SF Weekly, in the category of "Best Guilty Pleasure for Computer Industry Insiders." Though the Weekly says they have no idea who the "smart alecks" are behind 3MR, we instruct them to read the masthead, listed below. Otherwise, we await our plaque with baited breath, and hope you'll stop by our newly updated DeathRace 2000 site at:
http://www.mediawhore.com/deathrace
You'll be glad you did.
"3-Minute Roast" is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
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