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MS Faces Hard Sell in EU Antitrust Case
juicy_pants writes "The software giant emerged virtually unscathed in November from an eight-year battle with U.S. federal and state authorities over how its violations of antitrust laws should be rectified. But it may not fare as well in another major antitrust case, now entering its final phase at European Union headquarters in Brussels."
Oh yeah, THAT'LL happen... I can just imagine Scott McNealy saying "Hey, I got a great idea! We've been spending far too much time and money on this 'Solaris' thing. Let's implement Windows NT!"
I think what they don't really want to come out and say here is that they don't want Solaris to play nice with Windows (wasn't there a fiasco with Samba a couple years ago?)
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
European human beings are just as susceptable to bribery as American human beings. Maybe they've more pinache so it will look official right up to the end. But the outcome will be identical.
Case Dismissed.
Mario Monti, the EU competition comissioner is a real ball-buster. MS will have more trouble "buying" the trust of the Eurocrats than they did in the US. It will just be interesting to see what they end up doing.
BTW, when I say "US", I refer, of course, to the administration, not the citizens.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
I'm sure it's partly due to the fact that Microsoft is a US company, and is a large money spinner for you guys.
./ ?
Over here, slowing down the torrent of money that floods out of Europe into the US can't be a bad thing for us.
It's another reason why Open Source is good for non-US countries - money doesn't go to Microsoft, Sun, IBM etc - it stays in the local country (consultants, etc)
PS. I'm posting this over 3G - is it a first for
Get your own free personal location tracker
Yeh they really blew it with that Opera attack.
Where exactly was the anti-trust officer when Microsoft's websites were sending Opera bad style sheets? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing he was appointed to prevent?
So they proved to the world that the enforcement officer was just a sham concession.
Also another question. If MS can't see anything morally wrong between throwing a bad style sheet to disadvantage a competitor, how do we know that Microsoft doesn't also make the cache a little slower for Oracle, or the sockets a little slower when connecting to Sun?
I mean if they did that to code that we can see, what the hell are they doing with the code we can't see in Windows?
EU should require that file formats being used in software sold in Europe are publically documented in full to prevent the twisted (and existing) situation where customers are required to unnecessary buy upgrades for their software when other parts of the whole environment are made obsolete. Users should never be forced to pay just to continue accessing their own data. That would go a long way towards solving the root of the problem, instead of only chasing the ever-changing symptoms. Such requirement would also be totally fair since the real innovation lies in developing new features and ideas on manipulating the data and not in intentionally obscured ways of putting strings of data on a file.
Also, Microsoft's anti-competitive power and their ability to use it is not just about Windows and its ever-mutating versions. Having some government geeks take a peek at the OS "shared source" does nothing to guarantee a competitive marketplace. It's about the apps. Requiring standards compliance allows the all suitable, competitively priced and well-supported software to succeed yet without locking anyone out of the market.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
"Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous."
Do you really think so? I don't.
For a few reasons:
firstly the various companies (Netscape, Novell, Real etc.) that they have killed or are attempting to kill are all US companies, so success or failure in killing them doesn't help the US.
Secondly, they have 40 billion tied up in defensive investments and cash - thats dead money in the US economy.
Thirdly, they are no different from Wang, Polaroid or any other large company thats had success and simply churns the same old ideas. If Wang was allowed to lock us into wordprocessors, we would never have had the PC. If polaroid locked us into instant cameras, we would never have had the digital camera and so on. Who knows how many great new ideas would have come out if the PC software market was not locked down.
Fourthly, a large chunk of that money is going on foreign subsidies in markets where Microsoft isn't strong and on new development centers in India and China. They're training the US's future competition just as much as the next major US corp.
Fifth, the License 6 money came from markets where Microsoft dominates, which for the most part means they took it straight out of US IT budgets (their biggest market).
They contributed to the wave of IT sackings, but they don't pick up the unemployment cheques.
Sixth, these license revenue tricks makes their earnings look better, so US NASDAQ money goes into Microsoft shares instead of other NASDAQ startups. Those other companies may be the *next* Microsoft.
So no, I don't think this is healthy, even for the US.
Maybe I'm being too cynical but I seriously doubt anything will change.
The worst that will happen from MS's POV is that they'll waste a bunch of money on lawyers and maybe pay a big fine...and *possibly* have to publish documentation for some stuff they don't currently publish.
I'm pretty sure it will be a harder punishment than the US gave them but it won't be enough to hurt.
Nothing will change, just like nothing has changed since the US anti-trust stuff.
Tierce
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
(Note: I'm German. We've got problems of our own, but nevertheless:) Agreed, the state of affairs in Italy is pretty terrible. I'm always horrified when I see a TV report on Berlusconi's latest madness, I can't believe stuff like this is happening in 21st century's Europe. I wish some European politicians would speak up (as they did in the case of Austria's Haider - this seems more serious and thus far worse to me), but I assume they can't afford more open internal distress at the moment. Or something. ;) But I think we're getting there, too.
Of course, your laws on marijuana are apparently a bit more advanced than ours.
Oh and I know this is off-topic. I don't care - this is important enough to burn some karma on.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
All the anti-MS cases so far have focused upon the fact that Microsoft bundles software with its OS. There is another, more serious matter going on though: Try to buy an A-brand laptop these days without Windows. It is virtually impossible.
Microsoft's OEM license differs from the normal Windows XP license in that it shifts the refund burden upon the manufacturer. If, by chance or design, the manufacturer does not want to give you a refund for Windows, you are stuck with a top-dollar license for an OS you are never going to use. Microsoft cannot be blamed, because it is apparently the free choice of the manufacturers to ship whatever they want with their laptops.
In Europe, there are laws against bundled sales. Basically, they say that you can't force a consumer to buy a product A when buying a product B. While these laws would certainly inhibit Microsoft from bundling their software with their OS, it does _not_ stop laptop manufacturers from bundling the OS with the hardware. Why not? Well, let's do the math:
An exception to this bundled sales law states that, if a retailer has less than 30% of both markets (in this case the retailer is, say, Sony and the markets are the OS- and laptop-markets) then, the retailer _can_ bundle products. So, if all the laptop manufacturers ship Windows with their product, that is perfectly legal, as long as no single manufacturer grabs more than 30% of the laptop market. Divide and conquer.
Of course, since nearly all laptop sales are from said big manufacturers, somewhere along this line, the consumer is screwed. It boils down to the choice of buying either a B-brand laptop without Windows or an A-brand laptop, at the cost of a voluntary 260 euro donation to Microsoft. This is immoral. It is however not illegal. Shouldn't it be?
> So no, I don't think this is healthy, even for the US.
It is healtly for US politiciancs, so that enough.
(Unfortunaltely, it is also going to be healthly for EU politicians, so I think the EU antitrust case will end in their favor)
Nope, swap the Dollar symbol for the Euro symbol and add between 50% and 100% to the price. In the same way that with so many American products $1 = £1 by the time it gets over here...
> MS has been spending a lot of time and $ and lobbying in Washington to handle the anti trust suit domestically, and they've been very successful. However, apparently, even with that money and power MS can't handle European politics.
Europe isn't ruled by Republicans who will fold a winning hand in an anti-trust suit for ideological reasons.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If they are successful, where are all of the U.S.'s future programmers going to come from? They won't be allowed to tinker with computers in any way not sanctioned by MS, enforced by U.S. law, so either the pool of programmers will shrink to the point of disappearing, or they will come from outside the U.S.
But what about security profressionals? While we will still have some programmers, because MS will allow people to learn the MS way of doing things in schools, security professionals depend on researching how to break systems, hack into them, how the system works on the lowest level, etc.. Are we going to hire foreign security experts to work on things our national security depends on? It will become literally impossible to legally become a security expert in the U.S., and in fact that is already starting to happen.
We're really shooting ourselves in the head, over here in the land of the "free".
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
>It's value to our economy is enormous.
really think so? Its' impact on the economy is enormous, its' value though...
The presence of monopolies is devastating for the free economy. I remember reading an article back in '98 stating that microsoft would actually like a fall of the dot.com business, as it is big enough to handle it, while all those rising little companies would be eliminated. The field is clear on the web business, 4 years later.
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
Not a chance. Consider what was said earlier about 1/4 of Microsoft's money being made in the EU. That's quite a staggering amount. Even with a huge fine it'd still be preferable than leaving the region and loosing all that business.
autopr0n wrote:
:)
> Lets face it, this is really all political. I doubt the EU will
> be as lenient as the US has been, simply because it's not
> at all in their interests to have a powerful company based
> in the US controlling their desktops.
That's true. But normally they would face intense pressure from the US government to drop it. However, now they are facing intense pressure from the US government to march on Bagdad, which means they might slip a judgment in against Microsoft relatively unnoticed. The US (my government) appears to be getting quite frivolous in the random slapping on of economic sanctions, as they are proposing slapping them on Germany for daring to disagree over Iraq.
Once sanctions have been used, what does the US have left to twist the arms of fellow nations over Microsoft? Mind you, the US should not be arm twisting sovereign nations, but I don't think Bush views other nations as all that sovereign. His loss.
> Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and
> powerfull company. It's value to our economy is
> enormous.
Microsoft is a medium sized corporation (IBM is far larger). Its value to our economy comes from illegally abusing its monopolies (it butchered other companies and achieved a strangle hold over its markets). From that economic value, you must subtract:
1) the massive profit margin on Windows and Office milked from its customers.
2) money extorted from companies via Licensing 6 and costly BSA audits.
3) the productivity cost and damages to data from Microsoft's swarm of bugs and security holes.
4) the cost to our technological future by having a monopoly squashing other companies and the innovations they would bring to the market.
The result of your subtraction: it becomes obvious that a big greedy tick has hung on the side of the US economy for years. A tick that would be painful to remove, but that must be removed for the long term health of the economy.
> The really intresting thing is that for the first time there's
> a real alternative to microsoft in the form of Linux and
> Free software. The rest of the world is jumping on it in
> order to escape.
First time? Gee, where has Apple been all these years? Apple is better positioned as a desktop competitor to Microsoft. Don't worry though, Linux can make it on the desktop. Watch us, we'll show you how it's done. Then we can play all kinds of fun, healthy competitive games while sharing our open source with each other (like KHTML). It'll be great! You little waddling penguins are gonna have to get into shape though, if you are going to out run a Jaguar and out fly Mothra. Catch us if you can.
"Mothra Leo, the fluttering of your wings is Life!"
Japanese language song "Mothra Leo", "Rebirth of Mothra"
(Mothra resurrected an apple tree and the surrounding 8,000 acres of scorched earth,
six days before Apple's surprise announcement of the return of Steve Jobs.)
"Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous."
Economics is such a silly science. I am far more inclined to think that the money funneled to the Microsoft monopoly is a DRAIN on society in many areas.
I mean what authority will the EU have over MS if MS decideds to pull out of Europe?
And, umm, why would they do that? A simple analysis would show that pulling out of the EU market would cost them more than a company break up.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Microsoft declined to issue any new public comment at such a sensitive moment.
But we all know what that comment would have been: We are confident that Microsoft will prevail in this case.
If you're referring to the Trusted Computing concept (http://www.trustedpc.org/), it is not run by MS, it is a consortium of which MS is only one member (the founder members are Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, and many others have since joined).
With regard to trusted computing itself, a system designed to support it would not lose the ability to run untrusted software (i.e. it would not become a black box). However, trusted software would require a trusted OS, which in turn would require hardware that supports the trust relationship, etc.
Many people (including me) like the ideas put forward by the trusted computing concept because they allow for much finer granularity in controlling what the software we run is allowed to do. However, trusted computing is probably a bad thing for open-source software because of the cost and effort required to sign all software and whatnot (incidentally, it will not be MS doing the signing). This means that open-source software will be largely left behind as 'untrusted', while commercial software will become 'trusted'. To the extent that trusted software is better (which I think it will be), open-source software will therefore lose out.
If we look at it from one side, then yes, TCPA can bring us more security to general computing.
But if we look at it from another side, then well there is a saying: If you want to boil the frog, do it slowly - that wat it does not notice its being boiled. So maybe that's what MS wants - to "boil" us slowly. Because in TCPA there are (IMO) quite a lot of things which may go wrong if used ... say ... improperly.
hany