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EU Expands Microsoft Inquiry

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the remember-GE-and-Honeywell dept.

Space cowboy writes "The European Commission is expanding its investigation into whether Microsoft has engaged in anti-competitive practices - now it's not just the browser bundling, but also bundling of audio-visual components (such as Windows Media Player). " There's also a Reuters report - what is worth noting, tho', is that the basis for this investigation is in the market for small servers - *not* the desktop market, from what I can see/read. '

5 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. EU Competition Commission by SEWilco · · Score: 2, Informative

    The BBC article has a link to the EU Competition Commission. Their August 30th MS press release is here (English version). The default version is HTML, and there is no MS "Smart Quotes" damage to it. An MS Word impaired version is available, for some reason.

  2. Re:It'll Never Work by pubjames · · Score: 2, Informative

    The greatest government in the world - the US government

    What???? Are you kidding? You have Bush as a president and you are claiming to have the greatest government? Thankfully in Europe most of our heads of state don't have below average IQ's.

    Also, you'll find that in many countries in Europe people have a reasonable amount of trust in their governments i.e. that they are not corrupt and will do the right thing. That doesn't seem to be the case in the USA, where a great many people distrust their government.

    The type of political lobbying by large corporations that goes on in the US would be considered large scale corruption in Europe.

  3. Bundled apps by epsalon · · Score: 2, Informative

    There are two main diffrences.
    One - In the linux world you can opt-out and not install each component specifically. You don't see them merging it with the kernel. Damn, in Linux you're not even required to run a desktop.

    Second - The "bundled" apps in linux distros are usually the best of their kind, and you usually have the choice between several options. You are not forced to use what the M$ wants you to use. You can select each component to your best liking.

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  4. Re:Ludicrous... by Hanno · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem with WMP isn't multimedia playback, but the forced inclusion of Microsoft's own media licensing scheme. Thanks to WMP, they will be able to control what media you may download and when and if you are "allowed" to play it.

    Yes, Real is trying to do exactly the same thing with their software. Just wanted to remind everyone that it's not just software for media playback, but also for media licensing control.

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  5. As far as I know ... by YeeHaW_Jelte · · Score: 2, Informative

    AOL is hardly a player in the European ISP market, so why should the EU bother prosecuting them?

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