Redmond's biz-dev gorillas have strong-armed Sun Microsystems into bundling the MSN toolbar as an optional add-on to Sun's Java downloads in the US. What does the Silverlight-powered toolbar have to do with Java? Nothing! That's the genius of it.

A dozen years ago, Microsoft broke Sun's run-anywhere Java technology, which was supposed to make operating systems irrelevant for most applications. The Windows version of Java changed one function call, in a way that seemed trivial. It made many apps written for Windows not work on other operating systems. Sun sued, cementing the company's has-been status. Microsoft eventually paid a token settlement for having cock-blocked Java in favor of its own buggy, security-violation-breeding ActiveX technology. I'm sure Bill Gates considers it the best $20 million he ever spent. Where was I? Oh yeah: Sun has been reduced to bundling a non-Java Microsoft toolbar with every Java download, to pick up a few extra bucks. I can only hope the Sun staffers involved are too new to be humiliated.

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