1975 - Microsoft founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, friends from Seattle's Lakeside prep school who co-wrote a programming language for the Altair hobby-kit personal computer a year before.
By 1991, Microsoft's operating systems are used by 93 percent of the world's personal computers.
July 1994 - Microsoft in a consent decree agrees to change contracts with PC makers and eliminate some restrictions on other software makers, ending a Justice Department investigation begun in 1993.
August 1995 - Microsoft launches Windows 95 operating system.
December 1995 - Gates says Microsoft strategy shifting to focus on the Internet.
September 1997 - Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 4.0 in stepped-up challenge to Netscape Communications Corp., whose share of browser market slips to less than two-thirds of Internet users.
October 1997 - Justice Department sues Microsoft, alleging it violated the 1994 consent decree by forcing computer makers to sell its Internet browser as a condition of selling its popular Windows software.
December 1997 - U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issues preliminary injunction forcing Microsoft to stop, at least temporarily, requiring manufacturers who sell Windows 95 "or any successor" to install Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The company appeals.
May 1998 - Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general sue Microsoft, charging it illegally thwarted competition to protect and extend its monopoly on software. One state later drops from the suit.
June 23 - A three-judge federal appeals panel removes the restrictions that Jackson imposed on Windows 95 software, saying there was adequate justification to bundle the Internet browser in Windows.
August 27 - Government lawyers begin questioning Gates for 30 hours over three days in a videotaped deposition. Excerpts are shown in the courtroom during the trial. Separately, America Online begins secret talks to buy Netscape.
October 19 - The antitrust trial begins, expected to last six weeks.
November 24 - America Online confirms it will buy Netscape in a deal ultimately worth $10 billion, weeks after testimony in the trial from senior executives at both companies.
January 13, 1999 - Government rests its case after calling 12 witnesses.
Feb. 26 - Microsoft rests its case, also after 12 witnesses.
Sept. 21 - After rebuttal testimony, final oral arguments from each side.
November 5 - Judge Jackson, in preliminary findings, declares Microsoft a monopoly. He rules that the company's actions are "stifling innovation" and hurting consumers.
November 9 - A small advertising company in New York files lawsuit against
Microsoft, the first in a wave of litigation against the software giant following the judge's ruling.
November 19 - Jackson appoints Richard Posner, chief judge for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, as a mediator to oversee voluntary settlement talks between the government and Microsoft.
November 30 - Justice Department lawyers, state attorneys general and Microsoft representatives meet with Posner in Chicago.
January 10, 2000 - Software company Caldera Systems, which had accused
Microsoft of killing its competing operating system, settles its antitrust lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
January 13 - Gates steps aside as Microsoft chief executive and promotes company president, Steve Ballmer.
January 18 - Microsoft, in its first formal response to the court's ruling, says its Windows software doesn't represent a monopoly in the high-tech industry because the company doesn't control the price or availability of software to run the world's personal computers.
February 22 - Judge hears final round of arguments, rejects key legal defense for Microsoft.
March 24 - Microsoft faxes detailed settlement offer to government lawyers.
March 26 - Government rejects proposal.
April 1 - Talks between federal government and Microsoft break down and Posner says he is ending his mediation effort.
April 3 - Judge finds that Microsoft Corp. violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, "maintained its monopoly power by anticompetitive means" and attempted to monopolize the Web browser market. The judge also rules that Microsoft violated another section of the law by "unlawfully tying its Web browser to its operating system" and could be sued under state anti-competition laws.
April 28 - The Justice Department and 17 state attorneys general ask the judge to break the company into two parts - one company to develop and market the Windows operating system and the other to develop Microsoft's other software and Internet holdings, including the Microsoft Office suite of programs.
May 10 - Microsoft Corp. asked a federal judge to throw out the Justice Department's plan to break up the software giant, saying the penalty would far exceed the antitrust violations the judge found the company to have committed.
May 24 _ The judge holds a hearing on the case, including entertaining the notion advanced by an industry group that Microsoft be divided into three components. Jackson orders the Justice Department to revise and amend its proposed breakup.
May 26 _ Justice Department submits to the court a fine-tuned plan to break up Microsoft, but hews totally to its initial proposal to divide the software maker into two _ not three- companies.
May 31 _ Microsoft responds with a filing for the judge which offers testimony from several executives of other companies who share the view of Microsoft that the breakup would be injurious to the industry and to the economy.
June 7 _ Judge releases ruling.
(Copyright 2000 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV-06-07-00 1452MDT
