By Jo Maitland in Washington
In the eighth month of Microsoft’s anti-trust battle with the Department of Justice, the government introduced new evidence yesterday that showed Microsoft had falsified information prepared for the trial to support its case. In his cross- examination of Dean Richard Schmalensee, Microsoft’s chief economic witness, lead government attorney Daivd Boies turned to economic data provided for the case by the National Economic Research Association (NERA), for whom Schmalensee works.
Boies uncovered additional problems with the survey data that Microsoft commissioned from research firm MDC. The government has already discredited reference material and surveys used by Microsoft to support its case earlier in the trial. The new evidence has come out of emails between Kumar Mehta at Microsoft, Brad Fay at research firm Roper Starch and Jin Park at NERA. Roper Starch received an email from Microsoft requesting that the firm help NERA to formulate data for Microsoft’s case with the Justice Department. Roper Starch agreed and looked at a survey on browser usage which asked a series of questions on what browsers respondents used to access the internet; had respondents ever used the internet and if so, what had they used to get on to the internet?
Roper Starch replied that the questions should be re-written as, we’ve got apples and oranges here – different frame references, depending on the respondent. Roper pointed out that according to MDC data, only 9% say they get their browser from their online service/ISP. However, the data shows that the AOL browser is used by some 25% of people and also all other data sources we have say that this is the most common way for people to get browsers. Microsoft’s response to this was I think we are just going to use the MDC data. I think we can get by without using the Roper data. In court, Boies asked Schmalensee if it was clear the survey used in court by Microsoft was not accurate to which the chief economist replied: I am not a survey expert, your honor.
