Thursday's appeals court decision, which spared Microsoft a breakup but said it illegally maintained an operating systems monopoly, seems to have landed with a dull thud on the company's Redmond, Wash., campus. While Microsoft employees contacted over the weekend voiced relief that the appeals court threw out a lower court's decision to split Microsoft in two, most said they are more concerned with the business of building the software giant's new products than the immediate affects of the ruling. So indifferent were some Microsoft employees to the court's decision that few of those contacted said they followed Thursday's news coverage of the court's decision or read the 125-page court ruling. All of the Microsoft employees quoted in this story requested anonymity. Several of the employees contacted skipped a companywide meeting Friday with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, CEO Steve Ballmer and Deborah Willingham, who heads up human resources for the company's more than 43,000 employees worldwide. Ballmer had cut short a vacation to brief employees--about 30,000 of them in the United States--on the ruling and its implications.
|