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EU Says Microsoft's Abuses Are Ongoing
levell writes "Although the legal difficulties Microsoft was having in the US seem to be drawing to a close, it's not yet over in the EU. In this story, the BBC reports that the EU says it is still abusing its monopoly with Windows Media Player, and perhaps more interestingly from a Linux point of view, also in the low-end server market. The story is also being covered on CNN, Ananova, Reuters, etc." The EU's press release is informative.
Actually, both the OS and the Office sales are the true cash cows for Microsoft. The bundling of software for free to eliminate competition on the other hand is not legal.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
EU is the largest free trade area in the world. Both in terms of population and overall GDP.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
If Microsoft are found guilty, penalize, and then perisist, they may well be prohibited from trading in Europe completely. The EU has the authorization to demand a complete blockade of a given company's products from all member nations, and has the power to restrict trading to any nation that does trade with them.
(The US got nervous with EU privacy laws, for this reason, as the EU made it very clear they'd embargo any nation that bought or sold personal information without strict privacy protections being in place. I think that actually ended up in a small trade-war, for a while.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Quicktime isn't a file format as such, and there's way more to it than the player which most end-users see. Quicktime is a full media API, the first one that I'm aware of (though I imagine someone will correct me there - perhaps an SGI user?).
An example of a Quicktime use. An old Mac freeware app I wrote, Startupfrills, set a startup picture to show as a Mac booted up. It could handle JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TGA...you name it. And I never wrote a single line of image format-handling code. Just told Quicktime that I had a media file and would like an image data structure please. The same can be done for movie file formats, sound...a full blown multimedia API.
A better analogy in the MS world would be DirectShow. Not that I've done any DirectX development, but as I understand it you can add support for new file formats to the existing MS APIs via DirectShow filters. From then on, your MS API-based media app can make use of the new file format without ever knowing what it is.
Cheers,
Ian
I was going to mod you as Troll, but since you seemed so concerned about your precious Karma, I'll reply instead.
...to include a product that is evolving with technology to 'put down' legacy media players??
Realplayer has certainly tried to beat them in the realm of streaming content, but due to such little things as shit for quality and lack of content, they didn't do so well.
That's because M$ was able to push their format as a result of their monopoly. You're confusing the result with the cause.
Quicktime has really always been a Mac format,...
Bullshit. It runs on Windows & OS X which is BSD-based. Hardly a Mac-only (old style) product.
what legacy products???
Take a look at what Microsoft has done to other products as a result of their monopoly (Netscape, Lotus, Sybase) and try to learn something from History.
there's no place like ~
It has all the features that Windows has
I knew there was a reason I hadn't bought one
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Go ahead and force MS to sell those in the EU a copy w/o WMP. Now EU users will be forced to pay $30 to $40 to Real, Music Match, Quicktime, etc. to get the same functionality they get for free with WMP.
You don't get it. Do you really think WMP, IE, etc are all free? THEY ARE INCLUDED IN THE PRICE OF WINDOWS!
Microsoft has been doing the same thing for many years. Anyone remeber Stacker?
They find a successful add-on software application and build it into the OS. Since it comes with the OS, their competition dies, and they just raise the price of Windows a Little.
Life is too short to proofread.
Go ahead and force MS to sell those in the EU a copy w/o WMP. Now EU users will be forced to pay $30 to $40 to Real, Music Match, Quicktime, etc. to get the same functionality they get for free with WMP.
RealOne player: Here, free.
MusicMatch : Here, free.
QuickTime: Here, free.
You were saying?
(Oh, don't forget Winamp! Probrably the best of the bunch, IMHO.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Just let the market work itself out, the end product will be better, and you won't be giving the already oversized government a chance to increase its power.
/. should know this better than most. Again, this is bad. If I give you software for free knowing that it will help my bottom line in the end simply due to market share and sales of other softwares, this is bad. And if let be, MS will use all of it's might to see that it doesn't "lose". You see, the bigger guy has many more resources to trounce the other guy. Not helping the little guy simply because he is little actually hurts you and the market. Believe me, "leveling" the playing field actually "helps" you, the consumer. In practice this will actually allow the better product to rise to the top. This is good. Many are saying the field isn't level, and that it isn't level due to direct practices by M$. This is against the law, as it should be. This isn't the "land of the large corporation", they're only goal is to make more money. Leaving them unchecked is about as dangerous as it gets. Please understand this.
The government is simply an extension of the people. Giving more power to the people seems like the way it should be.
You seem to either forego much of the true history of things concerning the Standard Oil case, or simpy do not understand why it was done, and why MS is similarly being looked at. The Gulf inroads were minor on comparison, and Standard was well on it's way to "overcoming" those pesky guys anyway. Standard became more powerful than the government and the people were completely dependent upon them. This was bad
Monopolies have an ever increasing amount of leverage to maintain those monopolies, which is bad. You see, Linux may very well have been much much further into the market if it wasn't for these practices, which has nothing to do with the "best tool for the job" rising to the top. We at
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Your trying to rewrite PC History.
Prior to the unleashing of Win95, computer makers choose what software to bundle. Quite a few bundled non-microsoft applications with windows 3.x. My first 386/sx came with a media player (Audio Rack), contact management (lotus organizer), IBM DOS, PFS Windows Works, and Windows 3.11. Freebies and discounted software included CDs from Norton, Lantastic, Aol, Prodigy, Genie, Compuserve, Borland etc.
When Microsoft came out with Win95, all that competition ended when they changed the terms for what software could be bundled with Windows. They also dictated to computer makers what software could be sold with thier systems at the risk of loosing thier windows license.
Today with a windows XP PC, you have less choices in software out of the box than your average 3 CD boxed Linux distribution.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
EU commissioners usually are well known politicians in their country of origin but relatively unknown by Europeans in general. They aren't elected but nominated by their national governments. They are usually relatively incorruptible (compared to corruption in European countries, which is low on a worldwide scale). On the whole EU commissioners are excellent representatives of the people's interests.
People often laugh or get annoyed at the "bureaucracy" in Brussels. Just like at the level of the US Federal govt it is often necessary to put the smallest of details into writing to accomodate minority interests and to be fair to all in as many cases as possible. If you review EU proposed legislation over the decades you can see that they have created extremely beneficial legislation.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.