Any number of companies could have used this software patch that Microsoft itself now confirms was withheld from over 125 million corporate users, who were instead left to infer that Windows 95 would always have compliance issues and that they should migrate to Windows 98. Microsoft denies that any customers were advised to upgrade for Y2K compliance reasons. As company year 2000 product manager Don Jones says, "we do recommend that people go to the latest versions of our operating system, but not for year 2000 reasons".

[This just goes to show that companies with a virtual monopoly only have to "act dumb" by allowing a false impression to remain uncorrected in order to have huge revenue increases rain down on them. And this development puts the national and state legislative efforts to limit damages in Y2K-related lawsuits into clearer perspective, yes? -- JHF]

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October 06, 2008