Bill Gates did some late-night lobbying Tuesday night.
The chairman of Microsoft Corp. met with the Justice Department’s chief antitrust lawyer to try to dissuade him from a broad antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.
Gates, antitrust chief Joel Klein and top members of their legal teams met at an undisclosed location in Washington, sources said Wednesday.
“They met for about two hours,” one source said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates sought the meeting with Klein to make a personal and direct presentation of what would be at stake in any new antitrust lawsuit against the software giant.
The meeting came as the Justice Department and a number of state attorneys general are close to deciding whether to launch new antitrust suits against Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.
Separately, Microsoft released an opinion poll saying 64 percent of Americans thought that their state attorneys general should not bring lawsuits to stop Microsoft from releasing Windows 98.
