Windows 98, which featured integrated Internet capabilities, was released in June 1998. The following month Gates appointed Steve Ballmer, executive vice-president of Microsoft, to become its president and take over supervision of most day-to-day business operations of the company. In 1999 Microsoft paid $5 billion to telecommunications company AT&T to use Microsoft's Windows CE operating system in devices designed to provide consumers with integrated cable-television, telephone, and high-speed Internet services. During the same year, the company released Windows 2000, an updated version of the Windows NT operating system. In a move that allowed Gates to focus on the development of new products and technologies, he transferred his title of chief executive officer (CEO) to Ballmer in January 2000. The federal antitrust trial against Microsoft began in October 1998. Executives from Netscape, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and several other computer software and hardware companies gave testimonies regarding their business deals with Microsoft. In November 1999 the federal district court judge hearing the antitrust case issued his findings of fact, in which he declared that Microsoft has a monopoly in the operating system market. In April 2000, the judge ruled that the company had violated antitrust laws by engaging in tactics that discouraged competition. Less than two months later, in June 2000, the judge ordered the company to be broken up into two—one business producing operating systems, and the other focused on application software—and imposed major restrictions on Microsoft business practices, including controls on the way in which Windows is sold, and the “unbundling” of Windows and Internet Explorer for distribution as separate products. Microsoft appealed against all the judge’s findings, the procedures applied during the hearing of the case, and against the decision to break up the company. The company was unsuccessful as the Appeal Court decided to uphold the original judgement. It did, however, dismiss break-up as an option. The Department of Justice announced in September 2001 that it would no longer actively seek the break-up of Microsoft and dropped further action on its complaint about the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. One of Microsoft’s biggest rivals, AOL Time Warner, filed a suit in January 2002 accusing Microsoft of using its market power against AOL’s browser Netscape browser. The case was settled in May 2003 when Microsoft agreed to make a payment of US$175 million to AOL Time Warner. The two companies also agreed to cooperate on the development of high-quality digital media over the Internet. In a separate dispute in 2004, Microsoft agreed to pay Sun Microsystems US$1.6 billion to resolve various patent and competition issues. At the same time, Microsoft was fined 497 million Euros (US$597 million) by the European Commission for abusing its dominant market position. Microsoft unveiled a new platform, Microsoft .NET, in June 2000, announcing it as a “major shift” for the company, designed to make the “New Generation Internet”, a more coherent and powerful Internet, a reality. Based on Internet standards such as XML and SOAP, .NET is a set of services, products, and tools that provide an integrated and secure Internet experience, and the ability to organize, program, and display information in any form on any type of device. A development of the .NET initiative was announced in March 2001 in the form of a set of services codenamed “HailStorm”. This allows users to build customized XML Web services, and gives greater control over personal data. Microsoft has also been active in developing platforms and applications for wireless devices as part of the .NET strategy. In 2001 Microsoft released a new operating system known as Windows XP, the company's first operating system for consumers that was not based on MS-DOS. In September 2002 Microsoft announced the release of an update service pack for Windows XP, containing software that allows the user to hide Windows programs, including Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Windows Media Player. The option to hide these features enables Windows users to install and use the software of rival manufacturers as the default option, in accordance with the rulings on anti-competitive conduct at the antitrust proceedings. Similarly in March 2005 Microsoft agreed to issue a version of its Windows XP software in Europe that did not include the Media Player, complying with the EU ruling of the previous year. Microsoft launched its first games console, Xbox, in November 2001 in the United States. This was followed up by launches in Japan and Europe in early 2002. Xbox is a rival to Nintendo’s GameCube, which was introduced at about the same time, and PlayStation 2, which was first released by Sony in 2000. In February 2005 Microsoft launched an Internet search engine, MSN Search.