But for those who anticipated the decision as a judgment of Microsoft chairman and co-founder Bill Gates, the conclusion was foregone. Big stories, be they elections or antitrust suits, are about personalities. And over the past five years, Gates has morphed from supergeek — the ultimate vengeful nerd, who transformed himself from 97-pound weakling to world’s richest man — into terrible titan.

You can blame part of this phenomenon on the Citizen Kane syndrome; people love the story of the once mighty who have fallen and can’t get up. Some of it is due to the public’s lack of understanding of the issues involved, not to mention the technology. (Though the notion, advanced by both Microsoft and its rivals, that the computer business moves at light speed compared to the legal system was echoed throughout the press coverage of the verdict.)

And some of it is the fault of Gates himself. Even as he has tried to portray himself as more accessible — a regular multibillionaire Joe — he has come across more and more as a distant Oz-like figure, who mistakes his ego for the body politic and thinks what is good for him is good for the people. As much as people love that movie, they hate the man behind the curtain.

Moments after the verdict was released at 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, CNN’s “Moneyline” crew fell upon it like a pride of hungry lions. It was left to reporter Steve Young to rip his way through Jackson’s 43-page decision, while “Moneyline” host Stuart Varney checked back in with him every five minutes to see how much of it he had digested. Young looked like a man in the midst of a hot-dog-eating contest: No matter how much he wolfed, the food all tasted the same.

For the decision, as has been noted, was scathing in its language. Jackson’s description of Microsoft’s “oppressive thumb on the scale of competitive fortune” was the favorite of newspapers the following day. The unflappable Varney seemed most discomfited by a phone call from former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, who said the best thing the DOJ could do would be to break up Microsoft. Breaking up corporations, Varney’s tone conveyed, was so … 20th century.

By evening, most of the news networks had sampled enough of Jackson’s decision to cobble together some quick-hit specials putting the lawsuit in perspective. MSNBC handled its peculiar relationship to the plaintiff in a forthright manner, with news anchor Brian Williams encouraging viewers to log on to the MSNBC Web site to read Jackson’s decision in its entirety.

In a 10 p.m. special entitled “Target: Microsoft,” Williams presented back-to-back clips from Tom Brokaw interviews with Gates, the first in 1995 (taken from an NBC profile entitled “Tycoon”) and the second completed just hours before, shortly after the Microsoft press conference in Redmond, Wash.

If nothing else, Gates has stayed on message in the past five years. In 1995, he was declaring the consumer was in charge, and Microsoft but his humble servant, and that sentiment was echoed by him (and the company’s flacks) throughout the following news cycle. What had changed was his style. While the 1990s had found Gates in a fashion that could best be described as “full geek” (Chinos hiked to midbelly, blue Oxford shirt unironed, hair that looked literally cow-licked), he responded to Monday’s verdict in a tailored blue suit and tie.

To his credit, Brokaw’s line of questioning was consistent. Brushing past Gates’ ’95 gee-whiz act he cited critics saying, “You want to eat up your competitors.”

Gates paused before laughing, rather ambiguously. “It doesn’t ring any bells for me,” he said.

Fast-forward to Monday. Despite his sartorial overhaul, Gates doesn’t seem to have brushed up much on his people skills. He smiled unconvincingly throughout and stuck to his guns. “In no way can I say I would do anything differently,” he said of his behavior throughout the suit.

More damning was a condensed version of the chairman’s now infamous deposition, aired later that evening on ABC’s “Nightline.” It was only about 30 seconds, but it amounted to a montage of denial: “I don’t remember … I can’t recall … I don’t recognize that.” I hadn’t seen anything like it since Contragate.

Of course, Microsoft’s monopolistic practices don’t pose a threat to national security, and by Monday some of the more conservative papers were taking a more sympathetic stance toward the company. While the Wall Street Journal’s main story covered it as a chess match, with the next move being Jackson’s, its editorial page treated the verdict as (surprise) an affront to free enterprise.

“Who’s Next?” asked the editorial, before going on to limn the battle in “Moby Dick” terms. “The company says it will appeal,” wrote the editors, “and the Nasdaq’s plummet yesterday suggests the market sees a disconnect between the realities of the high-tech business today and the prospect of Microsoft spending years lurching through the courts the way IBM did in the 1970s, dragging with it Justice, a judge, boats of lawyers and all the harpoons envy can sink into its carcass.”

The thought that all that whale blubber might feed more than attorneys (especially the state attorneys general the editorial labels “sea gulls”) — that the breakup of Microsoft might benefit innovation rather than hamper it, as Barksdale maintains — is not an idea the Journal can stomach. It buys the oft repeated Microsoft line — “The consumer is the winner” — and losers (like Netscape) are just that. Wave bye-bye to them in the rearview mirror.

USA Today led with Gates’ defiance of the judgment, and in describing the DOJ’s action as “a deliberate assault” on competition, the chairman seemed to be talking about Waco rather than market domination. (The Gannet paper is not exactly cutting edge in its coverage of the Internet, though; the front page of its Web site Tuesday featured a link to “Strange sites: the wacky side of the Information Superhighway.” When was the last time you heard someone use that expression?)

The Los Angeles Times analysis, by Michael Hiltzik and Joseph Menn, probably did the best job of linking Gates to his company without confusing the two.

“Gates’ views also are shaped by a broader conviction that the government should have virtually no role in the Darwinian process by which high-tech companies develop their products and battle with rivals in the marketplace,” the reporters wrote. “He deeply believes his company benefits the world in general and everyone who uses its products in particular.”

The article also quoted Steven D. Houck, a former New York assistant attorney general involved in the litigation, who said of Gates: “He’s not used to losing, and he lives in a world of his own up there in Redmond.”

Reality’s knock must sound like the guns of Navarone right about now, though by all accounts the troops in Redmond have circled the wagons and joined their leader in defiance. Anything could happen over the lengthy appeals process, as all those who covered the trial were quick to add.

The description of Camp Microsoft that stayed with me came from MSNBC’s Brock Meeks, who appeared on Williams’ special Monday. “Everyone out there believes they are going to prevail,” he said of Redmond gang. “They’re in a very lofty atmosphere.”

That image, redolent of misty hills and kayaks, reminded me of the monks of “Magister Ludi,” the Hermann Hesse novel in which a select group of intelligentsia play a glass-bead game that substitutes for life. They didn’t have the DOJ on their ass, though. And they weren’t trying to sell their beads to the rest of the world.

Mayawati’s full majority victory in May 2007 UP State Assembly elections left her beholden to no one and has allowed her to act on her eccentricities, whims and insecurities. When she needed new sandals, her private jet flew empty to Mumbai to retrieve her preferred brand. According to Lucknow journalists, she employs nine cooks (two to cook, the others to watch over them) and two food tasters.

At a press conference today, Mayawati called the report “wrong, baseless, and disgusting.” She also asked that Julian Assange be put “into a mental asylum.”

Read the original cable here.

Jumping over to the Middle East and North Africa, two more revelations of interest: First, it appears that U.S. diplomats were skeptical of a deal between Microsoft and the now-deposed dictator of Tunisia, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

In a September 2006 cable flagged by ZDNet, an official at the embassy in Tunis expressed reservations about a deal that provided “for Microsoft investment in training, research, and development, but also commits the GOT [Government of Tunisia] to using licensed Microsoft software.” The basic concern was that the software giant would be helping Ben Ali’s regime oppress Tunisians more effectively.

Wrote the author of the cable:

Microsoft’s reticence to fully disclose the details of the agreement further highlights the GOT emphasis on secrecy over transparency. In theory, increasing GOT law enforcement capability through IT training is positive, but given heavy-handed GOT interference in the internet, Post questions whether this will expand GOT capacity to monitor its own citizens. Ultimately, for Microsoft the benefits outweigh the costs.

The company did not comment to ZDNet. I’ve asked Microsoft for comment and will update this post if I hear back.

Finally, a cable from Iraq flagged by AFP provides a snapshot of the ever-increasing reliance on private military contractors by the United States. The basic concern was that Iraq, which had already banned Blackwater from the country after the notorious 2007 Nisour Square shooting, would also ban all former Blackwater employees. And the U.S. still relied on the same corps of former Blackwater employees who had joined other firms like Triple Canopy and DynCorps.

From a January 4, 2010 cable:

[A government spokesman] also indicated that the GOI [Government of Iraq] might expel former Blackwater employees out of Iraq, potentially complicating security services for the Embassy. …

[T]here are many former Blackwater employees at other private security companies in Iraq, most notably Triple Canopy and DynCorps providing security services to us.

Another cable written a week later reported that, “The Embassy understands that Triple Canopy currently employs several hundred former Blackwater employees.”

UPDATE: A Microsoft spokesperson sends along this statement:

Microsoft partners with countries around the world to help spur local IT innovation and job creation, help broaden access to IT, and to enable governments to adopt IT in the delivery of services to citizens. This has been the focus of our work in Tunisia.

The sellers include eBay Inc. and private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz.

About 170 million people log in to Skype’s services every month, though not all of them make calls. Skype users made 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls last year.

Most people use Skype’s free calling services, which has made it difficult for the service to make money since entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis started the company in 2003. An average of about 8.8 million customers per month, or just over 1 percent of the user base, pay to use Skype services.

Skype lost $7 million on revenue of $860 million last year, according to papers that the company has filed since announcing its intentions last summer to launch an initial public offering of stock. The IPO was later put on hold. Skype’s long-term debt, net of cash, was $543,883 at the end of 2010.

The Skype takeover tops Microsoft’s biggest previous acquisition — a $6 billion purchase of the online ad service aQuantive in 2007.

Microsoft said Skype will become a new business division headed by Skype CEO Tony Bates, who will report directly to Ballmer.

Although it makes billions from its computer software, Microsoft has been accustomed to losing money on the Internet in a mostly futile attempt to catch up to Google Inc. in the lucrative online search market. Microsoft got so desperate that it made a $47.5 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc. three years ago, but withdrew the offer after Yahoo balked. Yahoo is now worth about half of what Microsoft offered.

Microsoft would be Skype’s second large-company owner. EBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, but its attempt to unite the phone service with its online shopping bazaar never worked out. It wound up selling a 70 percent stake in Skype to a group of investors led by private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz for $2 billion 18 months ago.

Besides eBay, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, Skype’s other major shareholders are Joltid and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

When Steve Jobs debuted the iPad 15 months ago, critical appraisals were all over the map, from effusive to dismissive, but I don’t think even the most gaga fanboy predicted that in little more than year the tablet would have meaningfully reshaped the entire personal computing industry.

But the symbolism here is even more powerful. In 1991, Apple was still pumping out popular products — that year the company introduced its first serious laptop, the PowerBook 100, along with its high-end Quadra and the iconic-looking Mac Classic II.

Then, in April 1992, Microsoft released Windows 3.1 and brought the mouse and multitasking to the PC masses. And that was that. Apple’s attempt to sue Microsoft for coopting the “look and feel” of the Macintosh in earlier iterations of the Windows operating system failed miserably, and for most of the 1990s, the company was an also-ran. Die-hard Apple lovers still claimed aesthetic superiority over the commodified Windows-Intel nexus, but they were like yapping Chihuahuas — indefatigable and noisy but hardly dangerous. Microsoft proceeded to throw its weight across the entire industry, crushing its competitors and even shrugging off the best antitrust efforts of Bill Clinton’s Department of Justice.

And yet now the iPad and the iPhone rule supreme — where litigation failed, a superior design philosophy has triumphed, at least for now. It’s one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of personal computing.

The move marks a major strategy shift for Nokia, which has previously equipped devices with its own software. Analysts said the deal was a bigger win for Microsoft than Nokia, whose CEO Stephen Elop in a leaked memo this week compared his company to a burning oil platform with “more than one explosion … fueling a blazing fire around us.”

Nokia said the partnership would “deliver an ecosystem with unrivaled global reach and scale.” However, it warned that the new strategy would also bring “significant uncertainties,” and said it expects profit margins to be hit by strong competition from rivals.

Nokia’s share price plunged 9 percent to euro7.43 ($10.11) in afternoon trading in Helsinki.

Elop, a Canadian national, joined Nokia from a senior executive position at Microsoft last year. The first non-Finn to lead Nokia, he is under intense pressure to reverse the company’s market share losses to North American and Asian competitors.

“Nokia is at a critical juncture, where significant change is necessary and inevitable in our journey forward,” Elop said. He added the company was aiming at “regaining our smart phone leadership, reinforcing our mobile device platform and realizing our investments in the future.”

Speaking later to analysts in London, he declined to say when Nokia would introduce a new device running on Windows Phone. But he said Nokia won’t bury its own Symbian operating system or the new Meego platform that it is currently developing.

The Symbian technology is being used in 200 million phones with 150 million more expected on the market, Elop said.

Android surpassed Symbian to become the world’s No. 1 smart phone software in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the Canalys research firm.

Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer said the partnership would give the team “more innovation, greater global reach and scale.”

“We need to, and we will, collaborate closely on development … so we can really align and drive the future revolution of the mobile phone,” he said.

The key challenge will be to come up with devices of a quality level and hip factor that helps position Windows Phone as an attractive alternative to iPhone or Android.

Windows Phone 7, which was launched last year, still has a lot of catching up to do in terms of both the number of users and the number of “apps” available for the phones.

Nokia said its expertise in developing new software with Microsoft will be “on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.” Its map services will be a core part of the new device as will Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Nokia said.

Neil Mawston of London-based Strategy Analytics said Microsoft was the big winner in the partnership, by teaming up with the biggest mobile hardware vendor in the world.

“In terms of expanding their distribution reach, this is a huge win for Microsoft,” he said.

For Nokia the deal leaves uncertainty about what will happen to its current Symbian operating platform. Mawston said he expects it to be phased out within two years and “completely, or at least mostly, replaced by Windows Phone.”

Although Nokia still is the mobile industry’s biggest handset maker, its market share has plummeted from a high of 41 percent in 2008 to 31 percent in the last quarter of 2010.

It has also lost its innovative edge in the fiercely competitive top-end sector and is virtually invisible — with a 3 percent share — in the world’s largest smart phone market, North America.

Apples’ iPhone has set the standard for today’s smart phones and Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerrys have become the favorite of the corporate set. More recently, Google Inc.’s Android software has emerged as the choice for phone makers that want to challenge the iPhone.

“Today, developers, operators and consumers want compelling mobile products, which include not only the device, but the software, services, applications and customer support that make a great experience,” Elop said.

He warned of further layoffs and restructuring, saying Nokia must “improve the speed and nimbleness and agility of the organization … by taking significant steps in how we operate.” He gave no details.

The company said it will announce a new leadership team and organizational structure “with a clear focus on speed, results and accountability.”

Nokia, which claims 1.3 billion daily users of its devices, said it hopes the “broad, strategic partnership” with Microsoft will lead to capturing the next billion users to join the Internet in developing growth markets.

Jyrki Ali-Yrkko, from the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, described Nokia’s cooperation with Microsoft as “surprising.”

“The strengths will be in Microsoft’s strong position in various corporate solutions and server solutions, but its weakness is that Microsoft perhaps doesn’t have a broad, user-oriented group of developers like those around Android or Apple,” Ali-Yrkko said.

——

Online:

Nokia: http://www.nokia.com

Ozzie was the company’s Chief Software Architect, a position held previously by Bill Gates after he stepped down as CEO. It was an ideal fit: Ozzie’s technical talent and vision for what we could do with technology were extraordinary. At Microsoft he headed up an effort to move the company toward the era when software was more online than not, a sea change for a company that had for its entire existence been all about what amounted to packaged goods.

I’ve been an Ozzie fan for years. To journalists who covered his doings, he was patient in helping us understand what he was doing. Just what that was could be hard to grasp, given how far ahead of his time he proved to be on project after project at several companies including Groove and, before that, Lotus Notes.

For all his qualities, Ozzie didn’t push Microsoft fast enough toward the future, or else his pushing was resisted. Microsoft dallied way too long to get into the “cloud” where software becomes as much as service as a product you buy. The competition — Google, Amazon and others — is more entrenched now, and for all the formidable technical talent at Microsoft, the company hasn’t caught up in key areas. Keep in mind, however, that Microsoft’s bread and butter (and gold and diamonds) remains in the licensed-software market, where it’s still an absolutely huge and immensely profitable enterprise.

It’ll be fascinating to see what Ozzie does next. I find myself hoping he’ll try something in the social-entrepreneurship arena. Certainly he can live with a lower paycheck than most of us.

As for Microsoft, which keeps losing (or expelling) top executives, the questions grow more urgent. Ballmer has been a better CEO than his critics say, but if the board isn’t pushing him to line up a solid successor, and soon, the directors are falling down on the job.