A MICROSOFT official acknowledged on Tuesday that the company uses a new feature in its Internet Explorer Web browser to play digital music files even if the user has already chosen a different music player.
The newest version of Internet Explorer has the ability to play music files within the browser, though it uses Microsoft’s Windows Media Player technology to do so. Rival media companies such as RealNetworks have complained that Microsoft frequently overrides user preferences.
Under questioning from John Schmidtlein, a lawyer for nine states suing the company for antitrust violations, Microsoft executive Linda Averett said Microsoft could use RealNetworks software to play music in Internet Explorer, but chooses not to.
”The reason it is not replaceable is that Microsoft does not allow it to be replaceable, correct?” Schmidtlein asked.
”Correct, it is an integrated feature,” Averett testified. RealNetworks also complained that the search feature in Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system fails to find RealNetworks files.
”It was clearly a mistake by the search team,” Averett explained. She said the problem was fixed two weeks ago – over a month after the states’ top lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, showed the search problem during opening arguments as evidence of Microsoft’s wrongdoing.
Nine states have asked a court to force Microsoft to release a modular version of its Windows operating system in which some features, such as the Web browser and media player, could be removed and replaced with competitors’ products.
The original judge in the antitrust case, Thomas Penfield Jackson, ordered Microsoft broken into two companies after concluding that it illegally stifled competitors. An appeals court upheld many of the violations but reversed the breakup order and appointed US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to determine a new punishment.
The states released a June 2000 Microsoft e-mail that showed a plan for Microsoft’s media player to play music files in proprietary formats by rivals RealNetworks and Apple.
”Remember the ’embrace and extend’ campaigns we’ve used in the past,” Microsoft employee Frasier Mocke wrote to colleagues, ”and personally I want us to rule the airwaves.”
Another Microsoft executive, Dave Foster, cut the discussion short: ”No more replies,” he wrote. ”We need to keep all of this off the airwaves.”
Averett said she personally disagreed with the tactic because she respects the rights of software developers to control how their formats are used.
States that rejected the government’s settlement with Microsoft last fall and are pressing for tougher penalties are Iowa, Utah, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Kansas, Florida, Minnesota and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia. ? Sapa-AP