The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Microsoft.

Microsuits Dan Morales, the attorney general of Texas, was the first state attorney general to begin investigating Microsoft 18 months ago.

He bluntly suggested that it would be a waste of the taxpayers' money to have spent three years investigating Microsoft only to wind up again with a tie vote and no decision.

But a person close to the 12 states investigating Microsoft said that blocking the product was not the favored strategy of most of them.

First Acknowledgement The statement was the Justice Department's first public acknowledgement that it was investigating Microsoft.

But Mr. Baer was not working for the agency when it last investigated Microsoft, in the early 1990's.

Even after the settlement, she said, the Government would be free to investigate Microsoft if evidence of other instances of anti-competitive behavior came to light.

Stocks were weighed down by a variety of factors, including rising interest rates, word that European antitrust authorities are investigating Microsoft and more attacks involving cyberspace security.

In addition to the Justice Department suit, several state attorneys general are investigating Microsoft, as are antitrust officials in Europe.

So after seven years and millions of dollars spent investigating Microsoft, the government seems to have found virtually no anti-competitive acts to account for the company's success.