California loses Microsoft case

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has endorsed the antitrust settlement worked out between the US Justice Department. most US states and Microsoft, in what is bound to be seen as a victory for Microsoft. (Microsoft lost money, it lost power, it lost a lot of respect, and now has to face a long string of attempts to cash in on its loss of the anti-trust case... but it could have been worse.) Kollar-Kotelly correctly threw out the arguments of the nine dissenting states, saying they "present little, if any, legitimate justification for these remedies and in most instances these proposals are not supported by any economic analysis." They were, of course, supported by Microsoft's enemies, most of whom are based in Silicon Valley, California. In the end, they may have been sunk by their own demonization of "the enemy", because a less hysterical and more rational case might well have gone down better with the noticeably hard-headed KK.