Feds Accuse MS of Falsification

WASHINGTON -- The moribund Microsoft trial was electrified Tuesday when a government attorney accused the company of falsifying evidence in a videotaped demonstration.

James Allchin, a Microsoft senior vice president, nervously stumbled over his answer during cross-examination, finally admitting that one of his staff must have screwed up. "They ended up filming it -- grabbing the wrong screen shot," he said.

Allchin insisted that it was a simple mistake and he had performed the same experiment with the same results, but Justice Department attorney David Boies refused to let him off the hook.

"How in the world could your people have run this program? You do understand you came in here and swore this was accurate?" Boies said.

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For a window onto the Microsoft antitrust trial, visit US v. Microsoft.

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Microsoft hoped the videotape would show that the version of Windows a government expert modified in an effort to disable Internet Explorer was slower and less useful. The video claimed the modified Windows 98 took a "very long time" to access Microsoft's Windows Update Web site.

But Boies noted that a careful look at the video showed Windows had not been altered.

"Kaching!" scibbled one government lawyer on her notepad. Reporters huddled in the hallway outside the second-floor courtroom, comparing notes and arguing over exactly how damaging the admission would be to Microsoft. Some wondered if Allchin committed perjury.

William Neukom, Microsoft's general counsel, reassured the impromptu hallway gathering that his company would get to the bottom of the incident, and, at worse, the videotape was merely an innocent mistake.

Still, it was a damaging day for Microsoft, not just because of the embarrassing glitch, but because its spokesmen had raised expectations for the company's half of the case, which began last month. In late afternoon trading, Microsoft (MSFT) stock was down US$5.88 at $167.06.

On the steps of the courthouse during a break in the trial, spokesman Mark Murray complained the government was "nitpicking on issues like video production."

"I don't think that's going to undermine the credibility of the testimony. The government is trying to change the subject."
But Allchin's credibility clearly wasn't helped by the embarrassing revelation, as he was forced to insist during a later part of the videotape, "What's on the screen is the truth."

Boies seemed intent on taking aim at Allchin's believability, rather than confronting his claims head-on. The government has not attempted to refute his direct testimony, submitted in written form, which says the modified version of Windows 98:

• Displays information, via the MSHTML utility, 200 to 300 percent more slowly than the shrink-wrapped operating system.

• Includes a version of URLMON that is up to 700 percent slower than the Microsoft version.

• Is plagued by a memory leak that will eventually cause all available RAM to be consumed, requiring a reboot.

Boies also accused Microsoft of conducting videotaped tests of the modified Windows on a computer with applications installed -- even though Allchin had testified it was a "virgin machine."

The discussion then turned to a discussion of computer "virginity." For instance, did Microsoft Office count as something that would cost a computer its virginity? How about empty values in the Windows Registry?

"It is not something that makes any difference," Allchin said.

Boies also tried to extract an admission that Internet Explorer really wasn't part of Windows since early versions of the operating system were tested with and without it.

In one August 1997 document, Microsoft said that a version of Windows 98 integrated with Microsoft Internet Explorer loaded programs 24 to 71 percent faster than Windows 95 did, depending on the amount of memory installed on the computer. But Windows 98 without the browser ran 52 to 79 percent faster.

"Sometimes pieces would be in, sometimes pieces would be out," Allchin said.

Boies also pointed to an internal "Windows 98 Disk Footprint Analysis," that said Internet Explorer took 18 MB of disk space, or 17 percent of the operating system. "Is there a list of the 163 files that are said to comprise IE4?"

"I don't know how they characterized this particular presentation," Allchin replied.

The next Microsoft witness to testify, perhaps as early as Wednesday, is Michael Devlin, president of Rational Software Corporation. He said in written testimony made public Tuesday that it's faster and easier for his company to write software for Windows than Unix.

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