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Windows Could Lose Media Player in Europe?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yeah-that'll-work dept.

Chris Gondek writes "If Microsoft cannot settle an antitrust case brought by European Union regulators, the company may be ordered to remove Windows Media Player as an integrated feature of the dominant Windows operating system, at least for personal computers sold in Europe. The European Commission also could order Microsoft to include rival media players with Windows to make those products as easy for users to access as Microsoft's own music and video player."

7 of 605 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is rediculous... by RCO · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which, I would think would include the original Windows Media Player crapware.

    The problem is that they are installing their own and excluding the others, so they are trying to make them either offer everything, including the competitors, or offer nothing, including their own. At least I think that's what's happening.

    --
    'And all the monkeys aren't in the zoo Every day you meet quite a few...'
  2. Why Indeed by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why should Microsoft be required to offer Real's whoreware product, laden with spyware and annoying popups and notifications.

    Could it be because competition is a good thing? Sure Real and their practices suck, but would you rather have no choice but WMP? And I'm only addressing you in the general sense, because like americans, there are undoubtably millions of europeans who don't know or give a rat's patoot, so long as they can watch or listen to their hearts content.

    Encourage a level playing field and let each player, or those yet to be born, to have a fair shot at it and survive or die based upon their own merits.

    "Psst! Push Ogg!"

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Why Indeed by ScrewMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This isn't really about choice vs. no-choice. The even marginally self-aware user will quickly find something better in a matter of minutes in Google. This is all about default installs, i.e. for the people that are, for whatever reason, unable to acquire and install an alternative. Ultimately, this comes down to a form of paternalism: "we, the powers-that-be, have adjudged you, Joe-Sixpack, to be unable to grasp the concept of competitive products and so, for your benefit, we are going to force that innovator from Redmond to include those products for you even if those products are of no use to you whatsoever and may even compromise your personal security."

      This "solution" is just so typical of what you would expect to be worked out by politicians. I can't say I'm surprised. The EU's stance on software patents and copyright has eliminated any respect I might have had for their depth of vision or understanding of the software industry as whole. The only surprising thing is that they aren't siding with the corporate giant, but that's probably just because it is an American company. Probably. I don't know that for a fact, but I do wonder how this would be playing out if Microsoft were an EU operation. Oh well.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  3. Re:This is rediculous... by mrdaveb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't see it that way. If Windows gives me the option to install or not install several different media softwares then that suits me. It also gives me the option to not install the bloat if I don't want it.
    I notice from Windows XP that MS seem to be playing a bit more nicely with other mail clients, browsers, etc by enabling the MS products to be completely hidden. I'd like to see more of that.

    When I install a Windows machine I go through the settings and pretty much invert all the defaults which are silly/ugly :-)

    --
    Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
  4. Re:capatalism on its death bed by Aneurysm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Linux has no trouble with bundled software because there basically is none forced upon you. Linux itself is just the kernel, any distros that ship anything else will usually give you a few CDs with several hundred popular apps. I can't think of any distro that has just one media player or one browser that you can't install the distro without. Plus, any single distro doesn't have the market share that would constitute a monopoly even if they did force this on you.

  5. Re:WTF!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What happened to the concept of a free market?

    It died when Microsoft became a monopoly.

  6. Re:This is rediculous... by hattig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why I always advocated "No Internal Cross-Subsidisation" as a term of monopoly settlement for Microsoft. Then each unit would have to compete and be profitable in its own way, and they couldn't use massive profits in one area to kill off competitors in other areas.

    That'd mean that a lot of geeks wouldn't have cheap XBox Linux servers now though. Dunno why they'd want them though, not when modern motherboards with a processor, memory, etc, cost about the same and run faster (e.g. Asrock mobo + 1.6GHz Duron + RAM + cheap HD + cheap case)