But in response to a question whether the department had considered trying to split Microsoft, she said Saturday that her lawyers had looked at "every possible legal theory."

Splitting Microsoft in two was the option championed by the Clinton administration, some industry groups and some economists.

And on Wednesday, he ordered just that: a plan to split Microsoft into two companies.

By a two-to-one margin, Americans endorsed the recent appeals court decision that overturned a lower federal court ruling that would have split Microsoft into two companies.

He was apparently referring to a plan proposed recently by several prominent academic economists to split Microsoft into five companies, including three competing operating-system companies.

As a result, there is no basis to split Microsoft into separate companies with all the attendant risks, costs and complexities.

A federal appeals court reversed a judge's order to split Microsoft into two companies, although the court upheld the judge's findings that the company had violated antitrust law.

The sensible thing to do is to split Microsoft into two companies, one dedicated to the operating systems, the other to the applications.

But it is not known whether the appeals court will erode enough of his decision to justify overturning his order to split Microsoft into two companies.

He would split Microsoft into a company that sells Windows and a company that sells word-processing and other applications.