As nine states end their case today for tough antitrust sanctions against Microsoft, their prospects for success, and failure, might have turned 180 degrees. When the trial on penalties started four weeks ago, most experts believed the states' most promising proposal was to require Microsoft to produce a version of Windows stripped of add-on products. An appeals court had offered some legal basis for that remedy. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was voicing deep skepticism about the states' bid to curb Microsoft's tactics in Web services, handheld devices and other markets outside PC software.
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