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Microsoft and EU Talks End
Paul Longford writes "Microsoft talks with the EC have collapsed. The competition commisioner Mario Monti just made this statement in which he said: 'I'd just like to inform you that a settlement on the Microsoft case has not been possible. I therefore intend to propose to my colleagues in the Commission next Wednesday to adopt a decision, which has already received the unanimous backing of Member States.' This is bad news for Microsoft - it looking at a considerable fine and possibly being forced to open up Windows. It looks like it will be a harsh decision too. Monti says: 'In the end, I had to decide what was best for competition and consumers in Europe. I believe they will be better served with a decision that creates a strong precedent.'"
I'm glad to see that at least Europe still has some functioning antitrust laws, unlike the US where antitrust laws were effectively gutted by the judiciary.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
MS contributes a lot of money to both US political parties.. Europe may need "liberating" soon..
This could be more fun than the SCO fiasco....Bill, open the file marked JudgementDay.pif :-)
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Hopefully this will allow for a more competitive marketplace, where standards are adopted across the board. Open source could really do well because of this. Only a small portion of the world lives in the US, and with the EU nations taking a firm hand in putting down Microsoft.
For those not sure if this will help the US adoption of alternate products, it will. Businesses aren't just local, they import products, export products, and deal in Europe all the time. When Europeans move to other products, the US will make the move, or force Microsoft to adopt the standards the EU companies do.
This doesn't spell the end for Microsoft, but rather, it helps to open up a standards based computing environment. One where if your product is closed and completely proprietary, and threatens vendor lock-in, it won't be well appreciated, nor will it really be possible.
Jason Lotito
that's why they want the strong precident so they go after MS again and again until they play fair (or they go bankrupt wwhich lets face it is more likley than them playing fair)
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
The biggest penalty is not the fine but the "requirements", such as shipping non MS media players and opening up some proprietry standards to competitors.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/18/news/international /microsoft_eu.reut/index.htm
"The company is certain to appeal against a Commission decision in the European courts. Litigation could take several years."
At which time any verdict will be pretty much irrelevant.
Wonder how this affects Longhorn planning. Anyone with insight on this?
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
1. A appeal request does not have to be granted.
2. A appeal does not guarantee that the restrictions being placed on them will not be imposed while the appeal is running.
Got Code?
... There seems to be a good amount of "they-are-all-out-to-get-us" sentiment in the parent's remark. Let's put some things in perspective here:
You see, courts in Europe have this strange idea that they are there to enforce the law and protect consumers. To make matters more absurd, they choose to stick to their principles even if large companies are involved. Strange, huh? ;)
And now the facts: the EU will, and has done so numerous times in the past, also punish European companies if they break antitrust laws. A complete list of antitrust cases from 1964 is here. And to give a nice example: in the cases so far in 2004, all of the listed companies are European.
That goes to show you.
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
Just to keep history straight: our judicial system (just about) worked, with the exception of the conservative appeals judges giving Judge Jackson a special hate-filled working over after he found against Microsoft.
The problem was the Bush Justice Department. Ashcroft simply refused to do anything, and let the decision be unenforced, thus snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The judicial system worked, after all those long years. Bush, who believes any regulation of business is socialistic if not outright communistic, according to an old Harvard business professor of his, finds the anti-monopoly laws distasteful in the extreme, and his cohorts are vetted to agree with such beliefs. When Bush was elected, the Microsoft case was effectively lost.
"Even if Windows was banned in Europe, the people wouldn't buy computers with Linux on, they would buy Macs."
You make it sound like Europeans buying Macs is a bad thing... I beg to differ. Giving a larger infusion into Apple means more useful R&D. Microsoft spends a lot on R&D and still cannot make its products immune from script kiddies or crashes and the like. Getting more Macs (and hopefully G5 Macs) means giving a larger stake of the industry over to IBM and the PPC architecture, which is good for competition. Look at Intel; footdragging on 64 bit consumer chips, running hotter with each model, and power consumption is getting out of hand. Perhaps such a shift in an important market like Europe would return their focus back to their design centers and start taking a serious look at power consumption.
And as for the open source side, the last time I checked, Apple's Safari is based upon KHTML, and that comes from the Linux side. An operating system based upon BSD. Those are some credentials when compared to the current standard (Microsoft). So why are you complaining?
And just as a note, just because Best Buy (here in the US) is dropping Macs from their stores does not mean people aren't switching to Macs; it just means that Best Buy employees do not know how to successfully sell them. You can get some deals on eMacs and PowerMac G4's right now there. They haven't cut the prices on the iBooks or PowerBooks yet though...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Given the anti-american semtiment in europe
It's anti-Bush sentiment. Of course Bush supporters don't see any difference, but there is one.
"Who thinks this will REALLY change anything?"
It will change the consumers' perception of what Microsoft actually is: An anti-competitive monopolist with questionable business practices.
Yeah! I was totally unaware of Microsoft's anti-competitive monopolistic behavior until this ruling. All my friends were shocked as well.
Lets take the analogy a bit further..
.. heck even your music system and the repair shops use Ford as the defacto standard. Of course, Ford has patents and strong arm tactics to maintain its position in the market.
Ford (Microsoft) has 90% of the market. Gas stations have pumps (hardware/drivers) that only work on Fords and virtually all dealers (dell, gateway, etc..) will only sell you a Ford. Parking spots, roadways
You could buy a Toyota (Red Hat). Unfortunately when you do, you realize that you end up having to find different pumps to get gas (which are few and far between), cannot buy a Toyota fully assembled (computer w/Red Hat installed) and end up having to buy a Ford (Wintel machine) and installing Toyota parts (Red Hat & software). Of course, even after you have your Toyota and you realize it is better (more fuel efficient, more reliable, more features, etc..), you find that Ford's dominance adversely affects the full potential of your Toyota. You no longer can use the local pumps down the street, you end up having to do maintenance by yourself (as very few if any of the shops will service your Toyota), and worse of all, your favorite parking spots, streets and music (software) is not supported full on the Toyota so you end up either having to find completely new music, new places to drive and new parking spots or end up simply being constrained on where you can go.
The bottom line is this -- cars don't work this way. I had a Honda and bought a Toyota. My CDs still worked in in, I could still get the same gas, drive the same roads, park in the same parking spots. The basic fundamental "user interface" is the same -- perhaps laid out slightly different. I can get it serviced at a wide variety of places, get the oil changed at the neighborhood gas station. No problems.
Unfortunately, when talking about computer system choice, this is obviously not as "drop in and go" as you make it out to be. The fact that Microsoft monopolized the market, coerced OEMs into supporting only MS products (bundling deals and the like), effectively dumps their product to get people hooked and does not follow industry standards to maintain a certain level of lock-in adversely affects everyone.
The antitrust legislations have also come down hard on the EU companies. About the only one in 2004 from the US so far is Microsoft.
Basically, they're showing that they have teeth to ALL who trade in the EU, both native and foreign.
If MS had been based in the EU, they'd have been defanged harshly at the initial hearing (unlike in the US where they got given a slap on the wrist, told to be good boys, and let loose to cause havoc again).
The reason Linux has been getting used in Governments is to help stop frequent virus infections, use an OS which they can tailor themselves, and isn't locked in to one vendor saying what they can and cannot do with it, and charging extortionate prices for that.
Even if they used Windows to run Government offices, they'd still need local contractors to run the machines..
If the offices believe they save money, then it's a fair bet in the long run that they will.
And it certainly stops the 'single point of failure' that a single vendor solution presents.
I'm not an MS fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm curious as to what people here think is "fair" in a realistic sense.
Open Source is nice, for example, but does that mean proprietary software is "unfair?"
So we can come to the car analogy again, for example, if someone starts putting proprietary air filters or even a proprietary stereo (where you can't figure out the connections, for example - you'd have to rip out all the old speakers and everything and completely replace it to put a new one in). Those things would really suck, and make me not want to buy that car, but would it really be "unfair?" Should the government step in and say that car manufacturer can no longer install stock stereo systems?
I realize we can go around in circles about what consumers are "forced" to buy when they buy a new computer, but the fact is that now, more than there has been in the past 20 years, there is a choice. So we can rag on all the losers that don't know a bit from a byte or what an OS even is, but if they are the majority and they want their "free" media player/browser/whatever installed when they buy the computer, is it "fair" to tell them they can't have that? Isn't this just making things difficult for the vast majority of the people involved?
I suppose we can look at future rewards from current hardships, but we have to ask if it's really necessary.
For the record, I don't buy MS software, I won't even buy an X-Box even though I love games, I just can't bear the thought of giving my money to MS. However, I'm not such an idiot that I don't understand why other people do it, and they should be free to do it if they want. People should start taking personal responsibility, if they put up with that crap, the manufacturers will abuse them - the same as we are being abused by the RIAA and MPAA and keep going back for more. If enough people abandon MS, they will get the picture.
A subscription to Mandrake, for example, is a good start... so is not buying cheapbytes discs, but buying them from the actual distributers. Macinstosh, for many, is also a fine solution, although I have no doubt that given the market share they'd be just as bad, if not worse, than MS.
Let's assume there's 500,000 slashdot subscribers. Let's assume 80% are open source advocates who use Linux. Let's assume they all did the $60/year Mandrake subscription. That's 400,000 * 60 = $24,000,000 that goes to Mandrake Linux. Let's say Mandrake is supporting a number of OpenSource projects. All those projects improve (not necessarily) and create more demand. After two years, 800,000 people subscribe. That's how it's supposed to happen, not by crying to the government to impose restrictions on your competition so that everything is "fair" - that's like a Harrison Bergeron world.
I'm really beginning to hate the word "fair", because I don't think most people actually understand what it means.
BTW, cheers to the people in the EU who fought this fight and made it happen. I don't know about any of your constitutions as much as I'd certainly like to, but the U.S. constition has no provision that life will be "fair".
This is not to say I don't agree with laws banning some monopoly tactics (like dumping and tying), just that I think it's not as clear cut as a lot of people think (is MS dumping their product by giving it for free with the OS when other companies don't charge for their media players or browsers?) Even the tying claims are difficult because it does give better performance to integrate some things with the OS, even if we all disagree that the performance gains outweight the problems that can cause.
I guess my biggest problem with all this is that it is not going to make MS go away, or even lose marketshare. As such, it's not going to cause third party developers to support linux or open standards (which is what we really want, isn't it?). We can't rely on the government to do that.
MS cannot "beat" OpenSource software, but it can keep us b
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Remember, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player are not free products. They are given away freely by Microsoft provided that you run Windows by which MS assume that you have paid for the development of those products within the cost of purchasing your Windows OS or other MS products. After all, the developers of WMP and MS need to paid somehow... It just means that MS have to do a bit of work separating out the "application" from the "operating system", exactly the same as every other developer of Windows products has to do - in the EU, we call that "a level playing field".
It seems that the best solution, with the EU ruling in place, is for MS to cut the price of each Windows OS and drop the "extra" products from Windows onto a separate purchased CD, similar to what the "Plus Pack" was but maybe call it the "Desktop Pack". After all, why would anyone running Windows in a server environment necessarily need to install IE or WMP on that machine? On the other hand, Joe Sixpack can go buy a CDs with IE and WMP on if he wants them or have the freedom of choice to go buy other products of even use Open Source ones. (Yes, dear Windows users, it may shock you to learn that there are a very large number of Open Source apps for Windows also!)
Microsoft need to be made to realise that they cannot "have their cake and eat it". On one hand, they encourage developers to create applications for Windows and hand out developer tools but, on the other hand, they integrate IE and WMP so tightly into Windows that they make it difficult for developers to create integrated media and browser apps of their own.
Finally, I'm pretty certain that most of the Windows users on here probably make and play MP3s and DivX/MPEG movies. So how do those same people feel about DRM being brought in with WMP to ultimately stop them doing that in the future. How are those people going to feel in 2-3 years time when they're forced to go with WMA & WMV formats that have to be licensed from MS first?
Maybe the EU has been hard on MS but, let's face it, MS have been pretty damn hard on a lot of other companies over the years so I personally am not going to feel sorry for them.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I (as a dutchman) call bullshit on that, Clinton was a popular US president here in .nl. Sure we made american jokes, but those where on the same level as belgian jokes, which means they wheren't serious at all. Bush has been the worst PR your country has had in quite some time. He makes your country look like a t-rex with the brain that goes with it...
The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently