What if, as some have proposed, Microsoft is broken into three to five companies as the result of the antitrust case?

He helped break the old Marriott into two companies.

D&B, as it is known today, broke Nielsen into two separate companies in 1996.

And AT&T has been breaking itself into four companies.

So therefore I'm attracted to the idea of breaking the operating system company into three equal companies - all with identical properties and activities.

Earlier this year he backed away from an effort to break Time Warner into four separate companies.

Several economists would go further and break Microsoft into three companies, each selling Windows and, perhaps, applications programs as well.

Late last month, the Justice Department and 17 state attorneys general asked a federal judge to break Microsoft into two companies.

That's closer to the kind of monopoly that Microsoft has, and the reason it should be broken into two companies.

But there is no objection to Macmillan's plan to break the company into two separate companies.