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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."
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. Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous.
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
can you say: "steel, bananas, oh fuck it, almost everything else!?"
i'm just waiting for the chinese anti-microsoft anti-trust suit. how ironic would that be?
MS will be found guilty and given the biggest fine ever. MS appeal - and the appeal process takes forever - RealPlayer fades away (nobody notices or cares)- Bill Gates donates $100M to fight AIDS in eastern Europe and is lauded as Europe's hero, a selfless white knight whose moral integrity should never be questioned again.
'Be the change you want to see in the world' - Al Gore
As you well know by now, the **AA has convinced a California Court to claim jurisdiction of Sharman Networks (Kazaa) of Australia.
Now that this Slammer worm hit South Korea, can they now claim jurisdiction of an American company seeking damages, now that precedent has been set by the Americans that it is OK to indict entities outside their country?
> I doubt the EU will be as lenient as the US has been...
... whose past victims include General Electric Co.'s legendary former chairman Jack Welch (from the article)
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.
>
The article is talking about Honeywell acquisition right? MS is becoming a big player in Washington, but I'm guessing that GE is still a bigger player in Washington and the world politics. They couldn't make EU to say "Yes", so it'll be tough for MS. Of course, it's not that I'm taking their (MS) side though.
Microsoft's position has been that unbundling Media Player would tear an irreparable hole in Windows and stifle future innovation. It has also said that Media Player's main rival, a product made by RealNetworks Inc., has more than three-quarters of the global market
Two points.
1. What exactly does RealNetworks have 3/4+ of the global market in? being the default media player? Or in web streaming? or maybe being a fk'ing annoying resource hog thats only life blood is a closed source streaming protocol that most people think of as "pretty nifty"?
2. If RealNetworks Inc. indeed does have more than three-quarters of the global market (we'll assume default media player) then isn't that proof that Microsoft's bundling of Media Player does NOT have a major affect on competitors?
I see where they are coming from but i'm just worried where the courts draw the line of OS and application. After all, if I make a calc program for windows and try to sell it would Microsoft have to not include "calc.exe" in the next release? Keep in mind this is setting precedence that could possible haunt linux distros and MacOS down the line.
Hopefully the EU will restrict ms from sabotaging other browsers through stylesheets and other actions, attaching stiff daily monetary fines for such actions, as part of the settlement.
Adopting a policy throughout the EU for adhering to w3c standards when designing web pages for government sites, and ensuring operability of the top 5 browsers of different manufacturers for any government sites that enable or require transactions with governments through the internet would go a long way in adhering to standards. While internet puke explorer would be covered since its use exceeds 90%, at least 4 other manufacturers would be covered, if they adhere to standards, enabling other players to enter and stay viable.
The top 5 should cover i(puke)e, mozilla, jaguar(?), opera, and whatever other manufacturer/developer would be in the group. Others wouldn't have to worry, as long as they adhere to standards, their browsers will work just as well.
Forcing ms to release operability code to others should also be part of the settlement, and it should be ensured that as part of this, the samba developers will get the necessary info for operability.
Hopefully someone within the eu who is part of the negotiations/case will read this, and include this as part of the settlement. It didn't get into the US settlement, but if it gets into the eu settlement it will help the public in the US, and everywhere outside the eu, as well as within the eu. If the multinational banks for example are forced to adhere to w3c standards in the eu, I doubt they'll have good code in the eu, and then intentionally break it for their US customers.
Thats a good part solution, but I also think they should be hit with a large fine.
I mean big enough to make the shareholders go OUCH.
I reckon the shareholders back the management, because they think all these abuses are earning money for them. So you hit MS in the pocket and the shareholders will then keep the company on the right side of anti-trust laws.
I think its better than the EU micro-managing a solution.
Trouble is, the EU can only levy a smallish fine (a couple of billion isn't going to have the OUCH effect).
Actually, US has a big trade-deficit with Europe, so it could be that there's more money flowing from US to Europe than vice-versa.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I did and I saw exactly the same as the Opera developers did:
- Neither IE nor Opera can render the Opera pages
- Opera (6.00, 6.04 and 7) renders the IE pages just fine
Which brings me to the same conclusion as the Opera developers: MS made an active effort to break the msn site in Opera browsers!I wasn't surprised, but reserve the right to be disappointed that MS feels it is necessary to play dirty...
According to the transparency index, many (but not all) of the EU member states are perceived less corrupt than the US.
The EU has issued a recommendation for official government websites, and they encourage W3C compliance and such things. Pretty good stuff. The link above is a good starting point for more information.
MS charges various prices on different products in different countries. In china,XP is USD 5.00. MS now ssends 100's of millions of USD to China in an attempt to keep Linux out. China has not put that much money into MS's coffers. Most of those "donations" is coming from the US economy as we are paying the top dollars. The same goes for India, Africa, and South America donations. Basically, we get screwed all the way around by MS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Microsoft's position has been that unbundling Media Player would tear an irreparable hole in Windows and stifle future innovation.
This is one of the more blatant examples of Microsoft's attempts to monopolize through bundling.
They made a similar case with IE.. "if we rip out IE, all the programs that have been written to include web page display functionality will break. <heavy sigh/> we could hide the icon, maybe."
The thing is, if they ripped out media player, what it would break would be the ability of software written for windows to display.. some Microsoft proprietary data formats.
Of course, this is one of those areas where you have a tipping point.. get enough users to write 'software' in your media player, and pretty soon you can't have new competition, because your new competition will be legally prohibited from playing your content, either through copyright law, patent law, or DRM/DMCA.
The EU is right to be looking at this.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
the shareholders back the management, because they think all these abuses are earning money for them
Earning money? How? Microsoft doesn't pay dividends.
The only way you get money out of Microsoft stock is selling it to somebody who's willing to spend more than you did on it.
There are three differences between Microsoft stock and any Ponzi scheme:
1. Microsoft stock is on NASDAQ
2. Microsoft is the only entity that can create more buy-in opportunites (aka shares)
3. Microsoft stock is (for some reason) legal.
The only thing that's kept MSFT from collapsing like any Ponzi scheme is item #2. Since they're the only ones that can create the buy-in opportunities, they've limited the expansion rate of ownership -- which means it takes a lot longer to reach that point where everybody who's interested has enough.
Sooner or later though, the investors will reach a point where nobody new wants to buy MSFT. When that happens, the self-fulfilling prophecy of MSFTs values being worth more because people think they're worth more will collapse. And since there's nothing backing it but belief, when that belief disappears, so does the value of the stock. Why do you think Bill G. has been rapidly divesting himself of MSFT stock? He's not a dumb man, and were it really a good value, no doubt he'd just keep it, yes?
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
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.
100% propaganda. I'm a programmer. I've read the TCPA specs. I understand how it works. I understand what it can do and what it can't do. The ONLY thing TCPA does is take away your control over your own machine. The central design feature is that the owner of the machine is not allowed access to his own encryption keys.
Unless you consider losing control of your own machine to be a "benefit" there isn't a single benefit of TCPA actually requires TCPA.
If they redesigned the system to give the owner of the machine access to the encryption keys you could get all of the claimed benefits and none of the negatives. They will never allow the owner to get his own keys because the system is not designed for the owners benefit - the negatives ARE the design goal. Every single "positive" is pure smokescreen.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
yes, TCPA can bring us more security to general computing.
No it can't, not if you define "security" as the security of the owner of the machine.
TCPA can only increase the "security" of other people - meaning it is a DRM system. It isn't going to prevent viruses either.
See my other post for a little more info.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I can say for a fact that through the evolution of the Windows NT product (NT 3.51 - XP) the speed of accessing NetWare servers has steadily decreased.
In fact, WinNT 4.0 had a MUP.SYS problem that caused NetWare access to be slow, for which they released a hotfix. When Win2k and XP exhibit the exact same problem, M$ claims they can't find the solution. Every time we ask them how the fix is going they say they're still working on it.
We also had to take a NetWare box over to NT because an in-house developed app (using M$ Visual C++ products) slowed to a crawl when we upgraded the clients from NT to 2k. Same machines, same code, just upgraded from NT to 2k.
XP is even worse.
There's more evidence we have collected. But there is no doubt in my mind that M$ is trying to drive the nails into Novell's coffin through purposefully sabotaging the performance of accessing NetWare servers.
The least you can do is do some benchmarks and publish them on a website.
Also inform Novell, I guess they could use that information.