Taiwan Expands Microsoft Investigation

Andy Tai writes: "Taiwan, Republic of China's Fair Trade Comission (FTC) is expanding the scope of its investigation into MS's pricing abuse to Microsoft Singapore as well as the core Microsoft in the U.S. (Referenced articles are from the United Daily News, in Chinese; summaries provided below)." Since I can't read Big5, I hope that some readers who can will provide more commentary here. Do any on-line translation engines do a fair job of rendering English from Chinese?

"The focus of the investigation has shifted to 'constraining competition in the marketplace.' FTC invesigators has visited Microsoft Singapore and will the Microsoft headquarter in the U.S. Because of the experiences of the U.S. and European regulators focusing on Microsoft's monopoly to date with no concrete results, the Taiwan FTC tries a different approach and looks at Microsoft's constraints imposed on software customers. Microsoft has a clever, complex system of international operations, and Taiwan's customers actually obtain licensing rights from Microsoft Singapore. Now this case has become international in scope.

Meanwhile Taiwan's business software users are calling for the FTC to look into the new Microsoft licensing program starting on August 1, which they say is another type of price hike and consumer abuse.

The government is setting targets for national initiatives to increase GNU/Linux use: 50% of computers in the government and schools and 30% in private businesses will run Linux, and there will be a 20-billion-Taiwan dollar (US$ 600 million) Linux industry in Taiwan, in 2006.

To counter all this Microsoft Taiwan is increasing its PR efforts, including numerous donations of computers and 1-dollar (3 US cents) MS software licenses to schools and non-profits. Taiwan MS President stresses that one main task of his company for the next year is to improve Microsoft's image."

Comments

Finally

[Pink Hamster]

I think it's high time someone told MS that they can't overcharge ($500 for XP professional, i think) Linux is a superior OS (in my opinion) and certainly at a superior price. Also Mac OS X is a great, and there are many business apps that run on Linux and OS X. Now if only the CONSUMERS would stop hurling there money at MS.