Bill Gates is expected today to reveal new plans for Microsoft’s Next Generation Windows Services, just two days after Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson decided to postpone restrictions on the company’s business practices until the conclusion of its appeal in the long running antitrust case.

The new strategy involves move personal computing from the desktop PC to large servers hosting software applications that can be accessed on-line from mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the PC. Analysts have called this a “mega-operating system for the web.”

The plans have raised concern from those wanting to see how Microsoft uses its dominance of the Windows operating system and Office applications into a range of internet services, without repeating its practices that led to the original antitrust case.

However, Mark Murray, a spokesman for Microsoft said the initiative “will be an open platform that will work with products from any company and provide lots of opportunities to other companies to innovate and build great businesses.”

It is expected that the antitrust case will continue for another two to three years or more, in which time Microsoft will, presumably, be hoping to complete development of its new application, before any court sanctions take effect.

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