Microsoft calls AOL a 'monopolist'

Microsoft and AOL are involved in a somewhat surreal argument over which one of them is the biggest monopolist.

In the latest twist to the antitrust trial, lawyers for the software giant have hit back at AOL's claims earlier in the week that Microsoft was set to use its .Net technology to protect its operating system dominance and help it control the internet.

But yesterday, Microsoft attorney Richard Pepperman told the judge presiding over the case that AOL is in fact trying to monopolise the web, not Microsoft.

According to US reports, Pepperman showed District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly a draft version of an internal AOL report written in May last year in which an AOL employee recommended that the company use its Time Warner media empire to promote its own internet services over Microsoft's.

The memo goes on to recommend that AOL make Time Warner's content available exclusively on sites using AOL's Magic Carpet technology and withhold it from sites that adopt .Net.

But AOL claims the strategy was never even considered by senior executives at the company.

AOL was giving evidence for the nine states that rejected the antitrust settlement reached in November by Microsoft and the US Justice Department.

AOL also has a private antitrust suit pending against Microsoft on behalf of Netscape Communications, which it now owns.