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Angelus said:
Machiavellian said:

In business you look to the future and hope for the best results.  In this MS is just following good business.  MS will be purchasing more devs or it could be just about anything and they want the FTC to have a more favorable eye to not jump to sueing them every time they make a move.  It may or may not be effective but it cost MS pretty much nothing to at least soften them up.

The FTC has already made it quite clearly that they have exactly 0 interested in negotiating with MS at all, nvm negotiating with them in good faith. And just as it relates to sizeable mergers as a whole, their attitude is clearly to drag everyone to court rather than simply working something out. No point picking up the phone for them at this point, unless, magically, the first word's outta Khan's mouth are "I'm so sorry, I really fucked up here..."

The FTC is not just some organization made up of faceless people.  I believe people forget that one head of the department can be gone in the next 2 years and another one would have a totally different outlook.  Also, if you take one situation and make it personal in business you can easily miss opportunities to move pass those hurdles.  Like I said it cost MS nothing to reach a settlement with the FTC and also maybe help relations for future acquisitions.  Burning your bridges just because you won one battle never helps in the long run.  The next group or administrators will notice that behavior and you would have already set a negative tone.  This is where the book "The Art of War" has significance.  Some times the best option is always to be nice until its not.  MS gains nothing by being jerks just because the FTC at this time are jerks.  

My main point is that if I am not gaining an advantage from it then its not worth pursuing.