Microsoft's lucky charm: Judge Thomas P. Jackson
BusinessWeek | at | by Mike
To what does Microsoft owe its victory in its landmark antitrust battle? Was it the brains of Gates & Co.? Was it the company's fabled toughness or its near-religious devotion to the principle it can put anything it wants into the Windows operating system? I don't think so.
Until U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson started shooting his mouth off to the media, a big taboo among jurists, things had been going downhill rapidly for Microsoft. Its lawyers, up against a highly skilled antitrust litigator in the Justice Dept.'s David Boies, were contantly flummoxed and ultimately faced a court-ordered breakup.