Mario Monti Fines Microsoft 100 Million?

n3k5 writes "EU competition commissioner Mario Monti has been in the news a lot lately, following "[...] a preliminary decision that Microsoft is breaking European law by abusing its dominant position in the personal computers' market. However, [the Commission] needs to carry out a series of consultations before finalising its verdict, due by May 1." (Financial Times article) The latest articles all cite German magazine FOCUS, which reports in its current issue that, according to "informed" EU sources, the Commission is considering imposing a record fine of EUR 100,000,000 (USD 123,840,000) on Microsoft. "Amelia Torries, a spokeswoman for Monti, dismissed the report as 'pure and utter speculation.'" (Channel NewsAsia article)"

Comments

Headline: EU Fines Microsoft $100,000,000!

[ssclift]

Next column:

Microsoft shares fall $0.02!

Ohhh... nasty... fined ~$0.30 for each person in the EU...

Slap another two zeros on that and you would be talking about a serious fine.

Cost of doing business?

[erick99]

If this fine is imposed and Microsoft decides to pay it (possibly after years of litigating), it still represents a little less than 2% of annual profits if we use a fairly conservative estimate of $6 billion dollars in annual profits. Perhaps, for Microsoft, this would simply be a cost of doing business.

Happy Trails,

Erick

Not enough

[IamGarageGuy 2]

Why do they simply give them a fine? This is behavior that deserves more than just paying a fine. MS has no trouble coming up with cash. If a few top level execs got thrown into jail it may make a bit of difference. Reminds me of the joke of only having to shoot one politician and the rest tend to fall into line.

Microsoft hat to disclose API

[tmk]

The Focus articles states that Microsoft hat to disclose "important informations about Windows" to their competition. I think that means the Windows-API. This would prevent further offences. Could WINE get advantages out of it?

Fines are fine, but open is better

[NixLuver]

As many have accurately pointed out, this fine is pocket change for Microsoft. Fines, in business, are rarely successful, because they can only be one of two things - irrelevant or destructive.

Many well-meaning individuals have proposed adding 3 zeros to the fine; this sounds good from an anti-Microsoft standpoint, but it's simply bad for the economy; remember that by fining a corporation ridiculous amounts of cash we don't punish the people that make the poor decisions (CEOs, chairmen, board of directors) but the guys just like us, working to make a living so that we can hack in our spare time and play with our kids.

There is a better way, I think. If we force open formats for data storage and network protocols, market penetration will be less useful as leverage to increase the barrier to entry of competition.

Gates doesn't mind fines

[Larry David]

Everyone else has come out with the obvious 'but 100m would be nothing compared to their cash reserves' line.. but forgetting that, Gates doesn't seem to mind fines anyway. He just sees them as a way of getting away with stuff and paying it off.

If you read many of the Microsoft biographies, you'll read stuff talking about how Gates was heavily into speeding everywhere he went, and was constantly being fined and given tickets. He even ended up in jail for it, which is where the infamous Bill Gates in jail picture came from.

But who cares? When you're making massive bucks each month, is it worth a few hundred in fines to stop speeding all the time, if you're not going to end up in jail for a long haul? No. Same goes with this. Paying this fine is just a great way of getting the EU off his back without any hard work.