Microsoft may have gone a step too far when crushing Burst.com

I, Cringely | The Pulpit: Stupid Microsoft Tricks
Why the Richest Company on Earth Feels it Needs to Cheat."

In my short memory Microsoft has gotten away with a lot of sharp business moves. This time they may have gone too far. As usual, it's not the actual practices but the cover-up that may get the attention.

... When Burst's lawyers put the messages in order by date and time, they claim to have noticed a peculiar phenomenon. There were literally no messages from approximately one week before until about a month after all seven meetings between the two companies. This meant that either Microsoft completely suspended its corporate e-mail culture for an aggregate period of 35 weeks, or there were messages that had been sent and received at Microsoft, but not divulged to Burst.

....It is too bad there were no backup copies of the erased messages. One would think a company like Microsoft would be more careful. Then one of the Burst lawyers pointed out testimony from a hearing in the Sun v. Microsoft antitrust case where Microsoft representatives said all e-mails were backed-up on more than 100,000 tapes that are held off-site. Surely the lawyers representing Microsoft weren't aware of this because if they had been, they wouldn't have said there was no back-up.

This will be interesting.