Gates back on stand in US$1b antitrust trial
Published:Wednesday | November 23, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Microsoft's Bill Gates returned to the witness stand Tuesday to defend his company against a US$1 billion antitrust lawsuit that claims the software giant tricked a competitor into huge losses and soared on to the market with Windows 95.
Utah-based Novell Inc sued Microsoft Corp in 2004.
The company said Gates duped it into thinking he would include its WordPerfect writing programme in the new Windows system then backed out because he feared it was too good.
Novell said it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a US$1.2 billion loss.
Gates testified Monday that Microsoft was racing to put out Windows 95 when he dropped technical features that would no longer support the rival's word processor because engineers warned it would crash the system.
Windows 95 was a major innovation, and Gates said he had his mind on larger issues.
"We worked super hard. It was the most challenging,