Bill Gates, who knows a thing or two about antitrust investigations, doesn't think it's a good idea to break up the biggest U.S. tech companies, as some politicians have suggested.

The Microsoft Corp. co-founder and former chief executive officer battled the Justice Department for years in the late 1990s in a bruising antitrust case.

At issue was the software giant's bundling of its Internet Explorer browser with Windows as a way to maintain its dominance in PC operating systems. Ultimately Microsoft remained intact.