Ok, so… it’s not completely gone, so we’ll still have to deal with the bloated monstrosity that passes for a word processor until everyone (read that as ‘businesses’) comes to their senses and switches to something else.

However, M$ did just receive the smack down (again) for doing bad things in word, specifically, stealing someone else’s IP (not that that’s unusual, they just happened to get someone who noticed and wouldn’t take the hush money).

Earlier this afternoon, the verdict was handed down in M$’s appeal of the guilty verdict they were given earlier this year for stealing someone’s XML code and rolling into word.

The good news?  M$ has to pay $290 million dollars, and stop selling copies of word (2007, primarily) that contain the infringing code by January 11th .

The bad news? M$ says they’ll have fixed copies ready to hit the shelves by then… too bad.. I was hoping to watch their profits flounder if they couldn’t sell Word (or, any package containing word) for 6-8 months or so.

Oh well…maybe next time they get caught doing something wrong….

and Grats to I4i for standing up to M$ and making them pay.