For many high-technology players, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's finding that Microsoft Corp. was a monopoly that harmed competitors and consumers was, if not too little, certainly too late.
Technology moves too fast, and justice is ground out too slowly.
Those ships have sailed,'' noted Rob Enderle, a senior industry analyst for Giga Information Group. But the battle over browsers, which figured prominently in the Department of Justice case against Microsoft, was just the beginning of a new wave of competition. Palo Alto-based Sun, whose Unix servers compete with Microsoft NT servers to power the Internet, said companies will now feel emboldened to make decisions on partnerships, technological developments, and marketing without fearing backlash from Microsoft. Not that Sun has been shy about standing up against Microsoft. Sun, best known for its workstations, servers and popular Java programming language, is in the middle of its own legal dispute with Microsoft over alleged breech of contract.