Government attorney David Boies challenged Rose to explain how Compaq could negotiate a deal with AOL that violated its agreement with Microsoft without senior Compaq officials knowing about it. Rose said he and other executives knew about the pending deal with AOL, but didn't know the specific terms of the contract until after the deal was signed and Microsoft complained. He said everyone assumed that Compaq would feature AOL on its PCs without any effect on its agreements with Microsoft - just as Compaq does today. We knew of the evolving agreement with AOL. . . . We did not know that that would violate the set-up procedure of the OPK process for Windows 95.
Consumers are free to choose which browser they use.
On Thursday, Rose continued his testimony, explaining that Compaq pre-installs both Microsoft and Netscape's Web browsing software on all its machines, and that consumers are free to choose which browser they want to use and to change their default browser at will. He said that Internet Explorer is shipped as the default browser as part of its contract with Microsoft, but icons for both IE and Netscape Navigator appear on the PC desktop. We ship the icons displayed on the PC, and the customer can choose whether they want Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. Later in the day, David Boies accused Compaq of violating a 1998 non-disclosure agreement it had signed with Be Inc., a company that makes an operating system that competes with Windows, by sharing with Microsoft confidential information it obtained during negotiations with Be. Rose said he knew nothing about this.