And speaking of long, bitter struggles, what struggle has been longer or more bitter than "Redmond Justice"? (Well, okay, lots of them-- but we're going to talk about the trial anyway.) Calculating purely based on number of witnesses processed, the trial is only about 54% complete, and most viewers place the government squarely in the lead so far. What makes that significant is that the latest witness, MIT economist Richard Schmalensee (Schmalensee... Schmalensee... We are never going to get tired of saying that name!) is the first witness that is on Microsoft's side. Or, at least, he's supposed to be, but his testimony doesn't seem to be helping the Redmond cause very much. Whereas we expected to see the tide start to turn once Microsoft started calling its own witnesses, instead we see Judge Jackson acting visibly skeptical of everything Schmalensee says.

According to an Interactive Week article, the judge directly questioned Schmalensee on three separate occasions in one day last week. Schmalensee's stance, as many of you are aware, is that Microsoft does not hold a monopoly, and therefore all antitrust charges are invalid. First, Judge Jackson was somewhat incredulous as to Schmalensee's apparent opinion that "the ability of affect distribution is no index of monopoly power." Later on, when Schmalensee suggested that the judge ignore that whole "Microsoft threatened to kill Mac Office unless Apple switched to Internet Explorer instead of Netscape" thing, claiming that such deals "are part of normal business practice," the judge countered with the observation that his argument only held water if Microsoft didn't hold monopoly power-- which has yet to be proven. Overall, Schmalensee didn't seem to impress anyone.

So Microsoft's first witness pretty much tanked, and both the judge and the Redmond legal team seem ready to write him off. Not to worry; Microsoft's got eleven more witnesses with which to build their case, and we're sure they'll provide plenty of entertainment in the coming months. By the way, to the industry watchers who predicted that the case would be over by the end of February: since the progress bar's only at 54% in late January, perhaps you'd care to change your estimates now?