Microsoft Loses EU Anti-Trust Appeal 322
Kugrian writes "Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute. The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position."
Go Samba (Score:5, Interesting)
P.S. Shamless plug, I ranted a lot about this on my own site [commandline.org.uk]
It's not about fines, it's about Samba and freesw (Score:5, Interesting)
The important thing is that when MS eventually publish their specs, they will not be allowed exclude free software from using them.
This is what FSFE and Samba have been working for since 2001, not fines.
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/ [fsfeurope.org]
Re:This isn't justice: too little, too late (Score:5, Interesting)
Though I do wonder what level of fine it would take for Microsoft to really change it's way of doing things instead of just making whatever paltry change the regulatory body required (like selling a version of Windows that probably no one is going to buy without IE bundled in).
I wonder because even after some pretty hefty fines in the past they seem to have changed direction very little as a company.
legislating market share? (Score:2, Interesting)
Quibble all you want about the merits of the law, the fines, today's decision, etc. (or don't) -- that's the right kind of discussion to have. It's when they show that their real goal is a desired outcome, regardless of the means, that I get upset as an entrepreneur.
I still don't like it. (Score:5, Interesting)
What I would really like to see is that the customers of MSFT see that it is in their best interest in having an alternative to MSFT in the desktop, server, office documentation products arena that will benefit by perfect 100% compatible interoperability. No customer would buy a Samsung TV that can play only Samsung DVD player. But why these corporations don't demand such compatibility?
One answer is that, MSFT tax is not very big. Just 40 billion dollars a year max. For most companies, payroll, medical insurance, office rent, furniture, liability insurance, transportation, travel etc cost more than office PC/laptop. So they are not looking for savings here.
Second, companies only focus on the differentials with their competitor. Stated differently, Coke does not care how much it spends on pc/laptops and office software as long as its competitor, Pepsi, is not spending a significantly lower amount on the same category. This explains the herd like behavior of the corporations. No body looked to outsource to India till about year 2000. One did. Showed some possible cost savings. Whether or not the savings were real, that first company's investment in India is real. Suddenly every suit is asking, "what if it pays off big time for them? What if we get left behind. Let us play it safe, hedge our bets and let us also have a presence in India."
I don't know when it will happen. But at some point some big company would make it a priority to have a second vendor in the office software arena, and invest a sum to show it is serious. Like a herd every suit who was asking, "What is our India strategy?" would be asking "What is our second vendor for office strategy?". Of course, not without some serious kicking and screaming and "Total cost of ownership" studies funded by MSFT. But when the corporate pendulum swings, it swings inexorably and usually it will go well past what is reasonable reach the other irrational extreme, corporations investing so much on "second vendor" strategy that the saving don't justify the investment. But that won't deter these suits, It never has.
Where will the money go? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This isn't justice: too little, too late (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe it won't matter a lot in another 10. Microsoft has abandoned its own back compat with Vista in many places and the businesses are denying Vista transition.
In fact I've been in contact and read/heard plenty of opinions of private users, small and big businesses, government employees and they all don't want anything to do with Vista (which is increasingly hard given many vendors do NOT offer non-Vista machines, forcing businesses to purchase standalone XP licenses or use second hand hardware).
More amusing are the comparisons I've heard about how fast Vista is: "slow as a dying dog", "as a overweight grandma on a treadmill", "turtle on vicodin", "turtle dipped in mud climbing uphills"...
Microsoft's own software (Office 2003, VS 2005, etc.) isn't compatible with their own OS right now.
Microsoft's a mess, and honestly, I do believe the EU lawsuit is a fiasco and not what we needed. What good is it they fined them nearly a billion. Will this help us somehow.
I honestly would rather prefer they sued them for delivering unstable, incompatible, and a resource hog of an OS, and maybe even sue the hardware vendors for not consistently offering XP as an option across the range (wee see some half hearted attempts here and there, such as Dell offering XP to businesses, and not to consumers).
This is a really pressing problem for millions of people worldwide. The vague problem of them including Media Player in Windows isn't that big, turns out (seeing that most sites use Flash / MP4 QuickTime for video anyway).
I mean, they compete with their own Media Player, by introducing Silverlight. If it stiffled competition so much, what sense does it make competing with your own player. Apparently EU sees things oversimplified.
Furthermore, MS would rather
pay
than lose their monopoly, and as a result, they will now have less money to put into proper development and thus indirectly stifle Microsoft's ability to put proper investment on bringing timely SP-s to Vista and XP (they got cash, but not so much cash that 700 million go unnoticed in their budget).All in all, whether you think it's too little too late, or like me, you think it's the wrong "victory" to begin with, nothing to cheer for in this decision of the EU court. Just more crap that will hit the fan.
EU vs. USA - MS pending (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's as much a 'global corporation which tries to screw you over'-sentiment than anything else, and that's why a lot of open source people (also in the USA) are rejoicing. But... that sentiment played little to no role in the ruling neither.
Basically, it's quite simple: they went against EU law and were dragging their feet to comply. No judge likes THAT.
Personally, I think they deserve a much higher penalty. The EU commision is way to soft on them - actually softer then on big EU corporations they tried to deal with in the past. And also, the 'provide an XP without the mediaplayer'-thing was outright stupid. *Everyone* with half a brain could see this would have no effect. First of all, it's too limited in scope: what about win-OSses other than XP, what about all those other applications other then the media player? Is the EU going to fight a 10 year struggle over every OS and application that comes along and has the same issues as was now decided on?
And apart from that: it's just suilly. Nobody is going to buy XP without mediaplayer if, for the same price, one can get one *with* it. By now, this obvious deduction has been proven right. No, what they should do is making it obliged that *every* OS MS makes gives the oportunity to install (or not) any application that comes with it (browser, media player, virusscanner, etc.). That way, you let consumers decide, and you give the opportunity to choose other applications instead of the windows-included-ones.
Such a ruling would have made better sense, coppled with opening up their code for compatibility and an even huger fine would make it clear to MS that no corporation is above the law, not even a giant USA one with lots of money and lawyers.
Re:The problem with monetary judgements (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft has the dumbest lawyers (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: This isn't justice: too little, too late (Score:3, Interesting)
However, maybe it is good that they fined them nearly a billion. I, too, doubt that that alone will make much of a dent in Microsoft's budget, but maybe it sets a precedent, and other nations may start doing the same. South Korea, for instance, springs to mind. One billion dollar fine might not make much, but if a large enough number other nations start fining Microsoft for anti-trust violations, they might have to do something real about it. Even if these nations are just out for the money, they still need some legal pretext in order to act, so if Microsoft will wish to avoid it, they might actually have to comply with the law or retract from business in those nations.
I know I might just be overly optimistic, but one must keep one's hopes up, right?
Either way, I'm much more optimistic about the "sharing of server protocols" part of the judgment. It would be great being able to use Samba as an AD controller.
Re:This isn't justice: too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The contradiction of capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Does AT&T ring a bell, mayhaps?
The company got split up, exactly as you say, and it's monopoly was over, and competition and innovation were abound.
While it may be true that a company strives to become a monopoly, it's equally true the state should strive to *not* let a company become a monopoly (or at least, deal with their abusive because of the monopoly-position). Quod licit Jovis non licit bovis; a surprising outcome has nothing to do with it.
Sign of pragmatism? (Score:3, Interesting)
Convicted = costly (Score:2, Interesting)