Nader Targets Microsoft at Conference

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who gained prominence 30 years ago by taking on General Motors Corp., on Thursday targeted a new economic power for the 1990s--Microsoft Corp.

In an unusual two-day conference, called “Appraising Microsoft and Its Global Strategy,” which was likened to a 1960s sit-in, Nader said the software giant must be stopped from taking over the information age.

Nader, Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy and other critics accused Microsoft of trying to use its dominance of personal computer software to wrest control of such markets as cable television, electronic commerce and the Internet.

Their attack comes on the heels of a Justice Department request that a federal court fine Microsoft $1 million a day for violating a 1995 consent decree that governs Microsoft’s licensing practices. The Justice Department claimed Microsoft violated the agreement by requiring computer manufacturers who license its Windows operating system software to also install its Internet Web browser. More than 80% of the world’s personal computers run Windows software.

“There is no place where choice is more important than the information technology business,” said McNealy, who acknowledged that he is “not impartial” because Sun competes with Microsoft.

Microsoft “is one company that everybody is afraid of,” McNealy said.

As with GM, Nader sees Microsoft as a threat to consumers. The company is using its Windows and MS-DOS software to stifle competition and place its own toll booth on the information superhighway, he said.

“In every case, Microsoft will be the gatekeeper,” agreed Gary Reback, a Palo Alto attorney and longtime Microsoft critic who opened the conference.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and other company executives were invited to attend the conference--as was Vice President Al Gore, long a proponent of computer technology. All declined.

Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Herbold issued a scathing letter to Nader, calling the conference a “kangaroo court.”

“It is regrettable that you appear to have aligned yourself with a small band of Microsoft detractors, whose apparent goal is to enlist the government’s assistance in their efforts to compete with Microsoft,” Herbold wrote.

The conference was organized by Nader, returning the longtime consumer advocate to the center of Washington’s public policy stage. In the 1960s, Nader made his name after publishing his muckraking book, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” which questioned the safety of GM’s Corvair.

The conference attracted more than 300 lawyers, journalists, academicians and industry captains, including Roberta Katz, general counsel of Microsoft archrival Netscape Communications Corp.

Experts say the Justice probe of Microsoft has galvanized public attention in a way that few previous antitrust investigations have.

“The investigation of IBM and AT&T; was basically a business insiders’ story that no one paid attention to,” said Oliver Smoot, executive vice president of the Information Technology Industry Council in Washington. “But this time, there seems to be a rather heated split between people” who support Microsoft and those who don’t. “People are finding it fascinating to watch.”

Indeed, some Nader critics say he may be overreaching in making a case against Microsoft.

“I’m a little bit surprised that a consumer advocate would be taking [the] side of the Justice Department’s antitrust [case] against Microsoft,” said James Gattuso, vice president for policy development at Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, a conservative Washington watchdog group that lobbies for less government regulation of business.