Microsoft Facing European Sanctions

Shakrai writes "CNN and Money Magazine are reporting that a draft decision by the EU committee overseeing the Microsoft investigation appears to recommend fairly severe sanctions against our favorite software company. The article states that the ruling will likely force Microsoft to offer a second version of Windows without 'built-in audiovisual software' (Windows Media Player) for EU customers. While this sounds like a good thing, the article also mentions that Microsoft has an appeals process and will likely get an injunction against enforcement while they pursue said appeal, which may take years."

Comments

But who wins in the end?

[Manip]

I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?

I think the 'normal users' will be hit hardest, a lot of them just want their media to play and in my opinion it is the place of the Operating System to provide the functionality. We might install something better, but it doesn't hurt us to have it there even if we don't use it. I think the same is true with IE.. it has helped the new users a great deal even if it is bug ridden and crappy.

Media player an essential part of the OS???

[Serious Simon]

Microsoft says Windows Media Player is an inherent part of the operating system and cannot be stripped out.

Who are they trying to fool? When they said this about Internet Explorer I could imagine how this could be true, but what parts of Media player might be essential for other applications???

Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos

[eraserewind]

I'm sure many businesses would love to be able to only purchase the parts of windows that they wanted.

Kind of sad...

[bob670]

that it takes the EU to reign in our rogue corporation, makes me sad the DoJ didn't go further.

And I'm not sure why anyone would post that this isn't fair, if you can't see MS is once leveraging it's desktop monopoly to control yet another market, you are blind or at least obtuse. Do we really want another Netscape on our hands, it's taken 5 years for the likes of Mozilla, FireFox and Safari to revive browser innovation while IE 6 has remained a stagnant, insecure and non-compliant piece of junk. Killing competition in browsers hurt the web, although it will be years before the useless business analyst get around to acknowledging this. We don't want the same thing to happen in media players/codecs, instant messaging or a raft of other technologies. Time to stop MS now. And vote with your damn wallets, if you don't like what MS does then switch to Mac OS X or Linux and put your money where your mouth is!

Windows needs 'distributions'!

[OwlWhacker]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

Microsoft should not be allowed to sell Windows with any additional apps whatsoever.

With Linux you have different distributions, why can't Windows work on the same principle?

You don't get Mandrake saying "Oh, we're not going to put into our distro, why should we put other people's apps in our distro's?"

The whole point of distributions is that you get loads of apps from loads of developers, and you get to select exactly what you want from the best available apps.

Having Windows distributions is the only way I see of overcoming Microsoft's anti-competitive monopoly.