Firing Squad Misses Microsoft by a Mile.(Brief Article)

Microsoft has escaped intact in a historic Court of Appeals victory that threw out "Hanging Judge" Thomas Penfield Jackson's order that the company be split in two.

The court hung Jackson instead, excoriating him for giving embargoed press interviews during the antitrust trial and for making public statements that the appeals court said made Jackson look biased against Microsoft.

The panel stopped short of saying Jackson actually was biased, but said the appearance of bias was enough to vacate his order to pull Microsoft apart.

Microsoft's victory, however, was far from total. It was more like 60/40 in Microsoft's favor, or maybe 70/30 depending on who you listen to.

The appeals court threw out virtually all findings that Microsoft's products and technology violated antitrust law, including tying the browser to the operating system. It let stand findings that a host of Microsoft business practices were unsavory.

The court, in a unanimous 125-page decision that just about everybody including Microsoft is still digesting, upheld Jackson's key "findings of fact" - that Microsoft is a monopoly and that it abused its power by attempting monopoly maintenance.

In a press conference Thursday afternoon a few hours after the ruling came down, Microsoft interpreted that abuse as the contracts it wrote forcing ISPs to give Internet Explorer prominence if they wanted to be listed in the Windows Internet service signup module, and compelling OEMs to give IE prominence on their start-up screens.…