Texas Investigates Microsoft’s Competitive Practices

September 10th, 2007

Texas has launched an anti-trust investigation against Microsoft Corp., but the southwestern state is being tight-lipped about the details of that investigation.

At this time we are confirming that investigation but we are not confirming any other details, said Sonya Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the Texas state attorney general’s office in Austin.

Microsoft said that its law department had received a notice from the Texas attorney general’s office late Monday.

It appears to be a request for information from Microsoft and is part of an examination of competition in Internet software, said Mark Murray, a Microsoft spokesman.

Microsoft has not yet spoken directly with the Texas attorney general’s office, Murray said. We don’t know what has motivated this request and we don’t know what aspects of Internet competition they are interested in examining, he said.

This is not Microsoft’s first role in an anticompetitive drama. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which, prodded by Netscape Communications Corp, is looking into Microsoft’s competitive practices. The investigation is still open, but Microsoft has not heard from the Justice Department in some time, Murray said. It has been relatively quiet, he said.

Murray dismissed anticompetitive charges as an attempt to distract Microsoft from the business of making software.

We understand that some of our competitors view government intervention as a tool to gain competitive advantage, Murray said.

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