Bill Gates must be laughing his head off. Following a months-long investigation, the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said that it would seek to block Oracle’s hostile bid to acquire PeopleSoft, arguing that it would result in higher prices for technology, fewer choices and less innovation. Setting aside the question of whether Uncle Sam has a case or not, Gates surely must be savoring the moment as Larry Ellison, one of the handmaidens to the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, is finally getting payback.

Ellison was one of the most outspoken figures in Silicon Valley egging on government trustbusters to go after Microsoft. The government finally sued Microsoft in May 1998. What’s less widely recalled is that the intellectual background for the lawsuit was supplied by a white paper prepared by local attorney Gary Reback at the behest of anonymous complainants. Although nobody has ever stepped forward and taken credit for producing the document, its aims quite neatly fit in with the interests of Oracle and other Silicon Valley rivals of Microsoft.

News source: C|Net News.com

Bill Gates must be laughing his head off. Following a months-long investigation, the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said that it would seek to block Oracle’s hostile bid to acquire PeopleSoft, arguing that it would result in higher prices for technology, fewer choices and less innovation. Setting aside the question of whether Uncle Sam has a case or not, Gates surely must be savoring the moment as Larry Ellison, one of the handmaidens to the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, is finally getting payback.

Ellison was one of the most outspoken figures in Silicon Valley egging on government trustbusters to go after Microsoft. The government finally sued Microsoft in May 1998. What’s less widely recalled is that the intellectual background for the lawsuit was supplied by a white paper prepared by local attorney Gary Reback at the behest of anonymous complainants. Although nobody has ever stepped forward and taken credit for producing the document, its aims quite neatly fit in with the interests of Oracle and other Silicon Valley rivals of Microsoft.

News source: C|Net News.com