The Redmond, Washington based software empire extended a hand in friendship and a fat antitrust paycheck to the venerable International Business Machines (IBM). In addition to the $775 million, Microsoft also coughed $75 million in credit for software deployment to IBM. Now things are square.
The case stems from the United States V. Microsoft case in which Microsoft was found to have put IBM in a chokehold for some of Microsoft’s unsavory practices of the period. This deal goes a long way toward giving IBM that long needed neck rub.
“With these antitrust issues behind us, both Microsoft and IBM can move ahead, at times cooperatively and at times competitively, to bring the best products and services to customers,” said Brad Smith, general counsel and senior vice president, Microsoft in a statement issued yesterday. “Over the last few years we have been focused on resolving our disputes with other companies, and today’s announcement takes another significant step towards achieving that goal.”
Microsoft continues its efforts to suck up to various companies they ran roughshod over during their massive growth in the last 20 years or so. Microsoft has dumped about $4.5 billion in recent years to clean up their antitrust mess. Fortunately for Microsoft, this won’t leave the big corporation strapped for cash as they reported earlier in the year nearly $40 billion in short term assets and cash.
The antitrust case, while bungled by the government in many ways, did result in Microsoft’s having to fork out the moolah to a number of companies. This IBM agreement was just a continuation of that.
This isn’t done for Microsoft though. RealNetworks, which got really worked over when Microsoft released put its free media player into Windows packaging took a beating from Microsoft practices too. RealNetworks bucks for a billion in their suit. Other companies have class action suits waiting too so the Seattle slue still has some work to do.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
