Watching the conduct of Microsoft throughout their antitrust trial, especially the testimony of Bill Gates last week, it’s finally become crystal clear that no conduct remedy, whether a gift from the DoJ, or a challenge advanced by the dissenting states, will affect Microsoft’s behavior. They are entirely unrepentant.
If Microsoft is forced to do anything they don’t want to do, they will break their own software, and say they were told to do it. With $40 billion in the bank, they can afford a few months of broken Windows.
The remedy must be structural, and it must be severe. Nothing else will have any effect.