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American Morning

Gallup Poll: America and Microsoft

Aired July 12, 2001 - 09:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We told you that earlier that Microsoft is changing its licensing agreements, that in response to a recent court ruling that says its competitive practices broke the law.

Now let's see how the public is reacting to the decision against the software giant. For that, let's go to our Gallup poll editor-in- chief Frank Newport. Frank, good morning.

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Good morning, Daryn.

It's a legal case, of course, with the government involved, but the court of public opinion is very important because after all it's the public's representatives, the government, the federal, the state government, who will be filing the continued lawsuits, if they do, and also, of course, Microsoft has been appealing very much to the public in a lot of its actions.

But what we have found consistently is the public simply does not have a strong heart for pursuing Microsoft. Look at this, favorable and unfavorable opinion of the company, we started way back in 1998. We've asked it numerous times, averaged it over years, really hasn't budged. Two to one or greater, a three to one ratio of favorable to unfavorable, just finished our last poll a week or two ago, you can see 60 to 70 percent, 60 percent favorable, 17 percent unfavorable. We got that still very positive image of the company.

We even asked this question. We said, "Is Microsoft's dominance" -- and that's the word we used -- "dominance over its software markets good or bad for the economy, consumers, the computer industry?" And in every instance we find large percentages of Americans saying it's actually more positive than negative. And, by the way, a lot of these questions, when we winnow it down to computer users or Internet users, we find the same kind of positive responses.

Finally, we asked this question after the recent appeals court decision just a week or so ago, "What should the government do now?" The number one answer is drop the case and settle. And this bar right here, just 22 percent say that the government continue to pursue the break-up of Microsoft. Some people don't know but basically that's why we reach our bottom line, Daryn, here is we simply don't see a lot of appetite on the part of the average American out there for the government to continue to pursue Microsoft. People are saying settle or do something and let's get on with our business. Daryn, that's where America stands on this very interesting case. Back to you.

KAGAN: Frank, thank you very much.

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