Slashdot Mirror
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."
The Justice Department released today the long awaited upgrade to the "Lawsuit `92" This update will fix the "Well there is always Linux" bug, and the ever persistant crashing or the case's funding.
There are no gods but ourselves.
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;
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?
But they couldn't figure out how to convert US dollars to Euros...
Karma whorin' since 1999
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
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
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
(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?
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
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