The pending antitrust case against Microsoft seemed to be far from Chairman Bill Gates' mind last week when he unveiled HailStorm, a project that would combine a host of online services with the company's new Windows operating system. But in Washington, D.C., another kind of storm was brewing as Microsoft's competitors quietly began lobbying antitrust regulators to take a stand against the company's latest initiative.

They already seem to have won over one important group: the state attorneys general who took on Microsoft in the antitrust case now before the appellate court. Last week, TheStandard.com reported that AOL Time Warner representatives met with them March 16 and had little trouble selling the argument that HailStorm would give Microsoft an unfair advantage in the emerging market for online services. Meanwhile, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and other members of the original coalition that pressed the antitrust case enlisted Silicon Valley legal powerhouse Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to draft a white paper outlining their concerns about HailStorm. Wilson Sonsini played a key role in persuading the Clinton Justice Department to sue Microsoft in 1998.