WILL RENO BRAKE WINDOWS?

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Janet Reno stood steely-eyed before the microphone, the Attorney General Like She Oughta Be, bringing bad guys to heel on behalf of the American populace. The bad guy in question last week was the software titan Microsoft Corp. The Justice Department's antitrust division, led by new chief Joel Klein, claims the software colossus violated the terms of a 1995 agreement that bars the company from using its operating-system dominance to strong-arm PC makers such as Compaq Computer Corp. and Micron Technology into installing additional Microsoft software on their machines, thus squeezing out competitors.

The strong-arming in question this time around is Microsoft's charming practice of requiring its hardware partners to plant its Web browser, Internet Explorer, onto the desktop of every PC they make, or lose the right to sell Windows 95 computers--which, since Windows operating systems now run some 85% of PCs in the U.S., is roughly equivalent to going out of business. Microsoft, Reno said, "is unlawfully taking advantage of its Windows monopoly to protect and extend that monopoly and undermine consumer choice." In other words, it's O.K. to be a monopolist only if you don't act like one. Reno is asking the federal district court to order Gates to drop the Explorer demand or pay the startling fine of $1 million a day.

The action makes for a potent political Rorschach test. Lefty Naderites see a portent of renewed federal antitrust activism. Right-wing anti-Clinton crazies divine a canny scheme to distract CNN from Reno's sluggish investigation of her boss's social calendar. Uber-capitalist high-tech buccaneers see a gaggle of clueless D.C. bureaucrats who they nonetheless hope will stick Bill Gates' severed head on a pike. And those lucky souls blessed with Microsoft stock options see the Beltway's latest ill-advised attempt to slay a goose that just wants to keep on laying golden eggs.

The problem, of course--or at least the uncomfortable truth--is that Bill Gates clearly wants to own all the eggs, not to mention the henhouses, the cartons, the supermarkets and the other geese. What's more, there's no immediately apparent reason why he can't. His Windows hegemony gives Gates an often insuperable lever that he has never been shy about using to elbow his way into the market for the countless applications, from spreadsheets to encyclopedias, that live on today's PCs. In testimony heard by Justice this fall and made public last week, one PC executive after another described how Microsoft's absolutist licensing agreements forced them to feature Explorer on their machines.

Compaq's tale of woe was particularly striking, if only because it demonstrates how even the world's largest PC maker can find itself laid out like an errant child across Bill Gates' knee. Stephen Decker, Compaq's director of software procurement, told Justice lawyers what happened in the spring of 1996, when Compaq told Microsoft it intended to replace Explorer on its Compaq Presario desktops with Explorer's primary rival, Netscape Navigator. Soon afterward Compaq received a Microsoft letter terminating its Windows 95 licensing agreement, followed days later by a second letter offering to reinstate Compaq into Gates' good graces if the Explorer icon were restored within 60 days.