BW READERS SAY: HANDS OFF MICROSOFT!

Edited by Douglas Harbrecht

This week, the Justice Dept. confronted Microsoft in a federal appeals court and asked for broad powers to end the company's allegedly predatory business practices. But according to a new Business Week reader survey, most respondents believe the agency should leave Bill Gates' software colossus alone.

Of the 5,072 readers who responded to the Business Week survey, 67% say the government should keep its hands off Microsoft. With the economy humming, innovation flowering, and the cost of computing falling, the majority of respondents argued that there's simply no reason for Justice Dept. antitrust chief Joel Klein to continue hounding America's most successful software company. "Justice should apologize profusely to Microsoft and to the voters for wasting Microsoft's and the taxpayers' money," wrote Dick Mallion of Whitefield, N.H.

Public support for Justice's antitrust suit is so low, in fact, that only 22% of the people responding to the survey favored government regulation of Microsoft. A minority of the respondents, some 11%, voted for breaking the company up.

Business Week conducted the survey as part of its Apr. 20 cover story, What To Do About Microsoft. Readers responded at the BW Web site and with faxes and E-mails. Complete results will be released in the May 4 issue.

By Mike France in New York