Here's a switch. After weeks of dragging out all the gory details of spats between Microsoft and its friends -- including chip giant Intel Corp. -- on Thursday, Dec. 3, the testimony at the federal antitrust trial turned to frictions between a couple of Microsoft's enemies.

Microsoft offered up a July, 1998, news story in which Marc Andreessen, engineering vice-president at Netscape Communications, blamed Sun Microsystems' Java technology for his decision to kill a version of the Navigator Web browser written with Sun's Java programming language. "A Java Navigator will have a lot of good attributes," he quipped. "It's slower. It will crash more and have fewer features. So you can do fewer things. It will simplify your life." When asked about Andreessen's comments, government witness James Gosling, the chief scientist at Sun, said Andreessen himself was at fault. "Netscape's engineering efforts were failing. We had to take over," he said.

That was the entertainment highlight in a day when Microsoft tried to hit hard on its two themes about Java and Sun: 1) Java is a dog, and 2) Sun and Netscape colluded to divide markets. Microsoft scored some points when it laid out Java's shortcomings -- and its own efforts to create superior Java technology. But its attempts to paint Sun and Netscape as shady co-conspirators fell flat.

UNDERACHIEVER. Gosling was simply a foil for most of the day -- while Microsoft attorney Thomas Burt filed document after document to paint Java as an underachiever that is incapable of delivering on its promise of allowing programmers to write their applications once to run on any computer. He cited a PC Magazine review from April, 1998, for example, that found that none of the Java virtual machines it tested -- the software that lets a computer run Java programs -- could run each of a dozen Java-based programs. The magazine noted that Microsoft's virtual machine performed best -- running 70% of the programs. But it said Sun's performed "poorly" -- running just 53% of them.

Microsoft's argument is that any problems Sun is having with Java are the fault of the technology itself, and not any Microsoft misdeeds -- as the government has charged. Burt even introduced internal E-mails and memos in which Sun employees praised Microsoft's technology. "Microsoft has independently built a first-rate virtual machine," commented Sun engineer Graham Hamilton in one.

The Microsoft attorney also got some digs in on Sun by showing that much of its own software would not qualify for the company's high-profile 100% Pure Java certification program -- which is designed to assure that Java applications are written in a way to assure cross-platform compatibility. "That certification process is somewhat overly restrictive," Gosling conceded, calling it "a marketing program that we weren't using internally very much."

But Burt made little headway when he tried to get Gosling to agree that Sun, Netscape, and others had unfairly colluded to defeat Microsoft. Gosling was quite convincing when he explained away an effort by a dozen companies to agree on a common standard for communications between components of applications. "That's just an example of what computer companies do all the time -- getting together to figure out what technology to embrace," he said.

"STOP COMPETING." Gosling also said repeatedly he knew of no formal agreement by Sun to give up plans of marketing its own browser in exchange for Netscape cooperating with its Java plans. Burt had prodded him with an E-mail from Sun product manager Karen Oliphant to Netscape employees that said: "Sun goals: Unify browser efforts. Stop competing."

At the end of the day, Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray posited that these alliances were similar to a meeting between Microsoft and Netscape in 1995 when Microsoft proposed a technology collaboration -- an event that the government has labeled an illegal attempt by Microsoft to divide the browser market. "The government is pursuing an unfair double standard," he said. But Justice lead attorney David Boies argued persuasively that there's just no comparison. In the Sun-Netscape case, he said, "There was no threat by a monopoly against another company."

The trial is scheduled to resume again on Tuesday with government witness David Farber, a telecommunications professor the University of Pennsylvania. Gosling is expected to return on Wednesday.

By Steve Hamm in Washington, D.C.