You know your company's made it big when you hold your annual shareholders' meeting while your own lawyers are fighting the Justice Department in court. (Actually, you know your company's made it big when your products run on well over 90% of the computers in use today, but that's the easy way to know.) Yup, the Microsoft shareholders' meeting went on even as Redmond-funded attorneys blasted away at Intel exec Steven McGeady, trying to punch holes in his claims that Bill Gates bullied Intel into ceasing software development. The shareholders' meeting gave Gates a chance to reiterate the party line to the company's supporters. A Computer Reseller News article has more on the rallying of the troops.

As Gates sees it, the DoJ is "misusing" email messages to mislead the judge, but that's okay because he's "confident Microsoft would prevail." The shareholders seem to be behind him on that one, judging by the standing ovation they gave him when he entered the auditorium. You've got to assume that the guy is frustrated, given that a year ago he claimed he was "confident the legal system [would] protect Microsoft's ability to compete." Instead, today he's got the headache of a mammoth antitrust lawsuit-- and we've got the top-notch entertainment known to AtAT faithfuls as "Redmond Justice."

Gates is sticking to the same script as always: Microsoft's business practices are the very antithesis of anticompetitive behavior. He maintains that Microsoft is being hounded for doing nothing other than improving its products. Aside from the fact that not a single Windows user we know has yet characterized Windows 98 as an actual noticeable improvement over Windows 95, he seems to be glossing over the little details, like all those threats. Perhaps someday we'll figure out how, exactly, threatening to cancel Office 98 could be viewed as improving upon Office 4.2.1 for the Mac. Er, poor example... Now that we think about it, we would rather use nothing at all than use Word 6.0 again. Hmmm, maybe Bill's on to something after all...