On June 7, 2000 the Judge in the US v. Microsoft case announced his verdict in the trial—Microsoft should be split into two companies, one for opera

Bonus: Split Up Microsoft and Managing the Verdict

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2021-06-08 06:30:14

On June 7, 2000 the Judge in the US v. Microsoft case announced his verdict in the trial—Microsoft should be split into two companies, one for operating systems and one for applications (with a number of details to work out). Today in 2021 is the anniversary of that decision. Hardcore Software is emerging chronologically, but given the anniversary and a chance to show some of the less nostalgic and more operational events transpired I wanted to share these two sections as a bonus post.

Quite a few whole books have been written about the trial and Microsoft through the era. None of them had much help or support from the Microsoft side. I wanted to share some of the context from my perspective, not about the legal issues, but about living through such an ordeal. One way or another, I found myself at least peripherally involved in the litigation going back to when I first started working as BillG’s Technical Assistant when the first FTC investigations took place. Even before that litigation, as I’ll write about below, was part of Microsoft’s employee narrative.

By way of context, in mid-2000 my title was Senior Vice President of Office and I managed the product development and marketing team for the suite of applications and servers, about 2000 people total. I reported to Bob Muglia who reported to Paul Martiz. Steve Ballmer had been CEO for all of a few months. PCs sold about 100 million units in 1999. Microsoft had successfully pivoted to an internet-centric company and more importantly and enterprise company. Hardcore Software will have a good deal on the transition to enterprise.