The government said Gates personifies everything wrong with the company, ... I infer from that if Gates has a smaller role in the company and Ballmer has a bigger role, that is a somewhat more suitable environment for achieving an agreement.

The company has to abide by the mandate that the court issues. That is, the court says, 'You must do the following, but I am going to give you the burden of finding the best way of accomplish that.'

This is the first time going back to 1890 in which the key assets of the company to be broken up consist of human beings and ideas. Who can predict what these people will do, and how effective the entities will be?

The public face was how frightful, but the internal sense of the company was how delightful. There were a number of ambitious managers in charge of the subsidiaries who thought they could manage the company better than the folks at 26 Broadway.

Microsoft wants to postpone as long as possible the creation of a document that describes how the company could be broken up.

This company is supremely adaptable, ... They're buying their way into the cable business and technological alternatives. The government's fear is that Microsoft will get off the existing platform [Windows-based computers] and on another. The government is confident that this company did something wrong, but they're not confident of what to do about it.