On Monday at the antitrust trial in Washington, Microsoft Corp chairman, Bill Gates was again the subject of a few sniggers. Gates had apparently been annoyed by IBM Corp’s decision to acquire Microsoft rival Lotus Development Corp, and bundle the software with IBM PCs. According to documents presented in court, Joachim Kempin, a senior Microsoft executive, told IBM that Gates was annoyed that IBM CEO Louis Gerstner hadn’t called Gates to discuss the deal, either before or after. Gates was concerned that IBM would provide Lotus with significant backing, helping it to win market share from Microsoft in its key Office suite market. Garry Norris, an IBM executive gave details of a conversation between his boss Tony Santelli and Bill Gates that took soon after the IBM/Lotus deal. Gates was complaining about SmartSuite, the audit and competing with OS/2,” he said. Norris was then asked how many people were on the call at IBM. He replied it was just Santelli with a normal receiver but that he could hear could hear what Gates was saying because it was pretty loud.”
