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."

Comments

Cool

[autopr0n]

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.

Painful to watch

[rhyd]

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.

Re:Painful to watch

[Selanit]

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.

Here's an alternate scenario.

MS is found guilty and given the biggest fine ever. (10% of their total global revenue is the upper limit, according to the article - so 2.8 billion dollars.) They appeal. The appeal takes forever. RealPlayer fades away, and there is much rejoicing.

Now the interesting part: the appeals run out, MS is still guilty, and with all appeals exhausted, they have to pay the huge fine. They pay it. The EU promptly uses the money to hire a bunch of crackerjack programmers to make the Linux desktop a true drop-in replacement for Windows. The code is GPL'ed.

Or, on an even wilder flight of fancy, MS in its arrogance refuses to pay the fine. The EU slaps a heavy tariff on all MS products, and diverts the revenue from that tariff to Linux desktop development. The code is GPL'ed, and the ongoing revenue stream from the tariff means that they can keep working on it till there's no good reason not to use Linux.

Not that I think that MS would be stupid enough to refuse to pay a fine. But one can always dream, right?

GE couldn't make EU to say "Yes"

[LinuxXPHybrid]

> I doubt the EU will be as lenient as the US has been...

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.

> ... whose past victims include General Electric Co.'s legendary former chairman Jack Welch (from the article)

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.

Re:nothing to lose

[gotan]

The USA's was supposed to "screw" Microsoft, because Microsoft so blatantly screws their competitors and their customers. But it wasn't to be, Mr. G. W. Bush announced, even before he cheated his way into the white house, that Microsoft would get off easily and so it happened. So the USA decided not to apply their own laws to get a grip on Microsofts monopolistic bullying, and now you're complaining when other countries don't let Microsoft as easy off the hook as the USA? The EU would probably benefit more from regulating the MS-monopoly than the USA, but how is that a reason not to apply EU law in this case?

Another step further

[WindBourne]

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.

Media player bundling and innovation

[jonabbey]

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.