(Washington, DC) – District of Columbia Attorney General Linda Singer has joined six state attorneys general in reporting to the US District Court for the District of Columbia that, five years after entry of a judgment to remedy Microsoft’s antitrust violations, “Microsoft’s market power remains undiminished,” and remedial provisions designed to facilitate the introduction of “middleware” offered by Microsoft’s competitors “have had little or no competitively significant impact.” 

In addition, the attorneys general note, “[w]hen the remedial regime imposed by the Court expires in large part in November, 2007, the principal constraint on Microsoft’s ability to abuse its market power will be gone.”

The report explains that one of the premises behind the judgment’s terms was “the notion that any harm done by Microsoft to Netscape/Java could be remedied by nourishing similar middleware threats in the future.”  A major reason why the judgment has been ineffective, the attorneys general contend, “is that no middleware product has emerged in the last 15 years that poses the same level of platform threat to Microsoft’s operating system dominance that Netscape/Java posed in the mid-1990’s.”

None of the states joining the report consented to the judgment that the federal district court entered against Microsoft in 2002.  

“Continued prosecutorial vigilance and judicial oversight are needed to protect any new competition that may emerge to challenge Microsoft’s single-firm monopoly,” Attorney General Singer said.  “While the sources of potential new competition may change as the location of important computer programs shifts from computer hard drives to Internet Web sites, the need for effective government enforcement will remain.”

Microsoft’s share of Intel-compatible PC operating systems has remained high, declining from 97 percent in 2002 to 92 percent in 2006.  During the same period, Microsoft’s share of Web browser use has also remained high, declining from 95 percent to 85 percent.

Singer thanked California Attorney General Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr., and Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and their staffs for their leading roles in addressing the enforcement issues arising from the Microsoft decree.