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Microsoft To Be Fined E500M By European Union?
An anonymous reader writes "According to a Reuters story, the European Commission is in the process of fining Microsoft 497 million Euros ($613 million). The most important reason for the fine was the refusal by Microsoft to share more information about its products with competitors. Mario Monti, the EU competition commissioner, decided to impose the fine after talks with Microsoft broke down last week." The last estimate was a mere 100 million Euros, and it's noted: "If the full European Commission backs the fine as expected on Wednesday it would exceed the 462 million euro penalty imposed on Hoffman-La Roche AG in 2001 for being ringleader of a vitamin cartel."
The summary failed to mention that they will be forced to release a version of Windows without Media Player and 'encourage' the use of other media players. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
You have it backwards. If they don't pay up, they'll not be able to trade in the EU at all. That'd be more than an 'irritant'. They'd also face even larger fines for non-compliance and in extreme cases BG could face extradition and trial (it'll never get that far though).
The european market is worth a hell of a lot more than they're being fined - they'll pay up, just to protect the right to sell in that market. Can you imagine the knock-on effects of not being able to sell to the EU? We'd develop our own apps and OS (or use one that someone had conveniently written and given away free...), that'd become the defacto standard in Europe, and would murder the MS monopoly elsewhere because they couldn't force Office upgrades on people any more... Aint gonna happen - BG isn't that stupid.
They hike up the price for vitamin supplements to score big profits.
Simple as that.
Just saying it like it are.
You must be the only person who thinks that the appeals process will take less than a couple of years.
The current ruling could set a useful precedent... with someone finally having the guts to intervene against illegal abuse of monopolies, Microsoft may finally have to pay for the damage it has done to the software industry and users
I think it was vitamins C and Beta Carrotine could have been A and some of the B Complex (I don't think it included any of the exotic suppliments). Anyway there were several big vitamin companies (a japanese one and ADM over here) who all conspired to keep the prices high by limiting supply. They were pretty direct about it, but thought that as long as they met in places where it was legal and were quiet about it they would get away with it. That's why the fines were so big, it was a major scandal in the mid 90s when the governments broke the cartel (and it was an open and shut case as they pretty much did it in the same style as OPEC (here's your quota etc). If you google for anti-trust and ADM you should find more than you ever wanted to read about it.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
You're joking, right? Could you imagine the panic that would ensue if Microsoft tanked in one night? My god, it would be like the apocalypse hit Wall Street.
The economy is not all about good products and services being dealt at a fair price. In fact, it's 99% about confidence that that's what's happening. And an AWFUL lot of people are confident that that is what Microsoft is doing. If that confidence was suddenly undermined, the ensuing whirlpool could take an awful lot down the drain before things got back under control. Microsoft needs to be brought down to size the way IBM was - competition needs to wittle it down slowly to the point where it's size and market power reflect the quality and value of its offerings. A sudden disastrous strike taking it out could have horrible consequences.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
The European Commision isn't actually a court. In fact, several of the EC's antitrust decisions have been overturned by the real courts (such as the European Court of Justice) in recent years.
Nowhere does the grandparent post say that a government should tell MS how to write there software.
Granparent post says the file formats should be released as an ECMA standard so people who have 10 years worth of documents in a proprietary MS standard format can switch to a competitor with out worrying about losing their documents.
Open Standards == competition. Closed Standards == exploitation of monopoly.
If two products can read and write the same file interchangebly then the two products can compete. If not they can't. Plain and simple. MS is all about making proprietary de-facto standards and using them to eliminate the competition.
A Free Market based on Competition does not exist at present. Having MS release their file formats (and Client-Server communication protocols) as an open standard would restore the Free Market. Releasing the format does not, in any way, tell them how to design or implement their software.
What is MS afraid of? Competition?
The only court that can hear the appeal is the European Court of Justice. After that no further appeals are possible. A couple of years is a reasonable timescale.
Why on earth did you get moderated "flamebait"?
Nope--there was nothing funny at all about the price-fixing in vitamins led by Hoffman-LaRoche. I know a manager at a local plant of Hoffman-LaRoche, and used to work (in a different industry) with a man who at one point was HLR's general manager of animal vitamins. So I've heard about the court case (which went on for years, and included anti-trust action in the EU and in the United States, and possibly elsewhere).
Is price-fixing in vitamins a big deal?
First, we're not talking about somebody trying to corner the market in One-A-Day tablets. We're talking about a small group of chemical companies colluding to fix the prices of (and markets for) vitamins that are included in food products. That's things like the Vitamin D in your milk. And--more significantly in terms of market size--it is the vitamin supplements included in animal feeds.
A brief discussion of animal feed
I am a geek--but I am a geek who is heavily involved in 4-H (non-U.S. readers: 4-H is a program for American youth [mostly farm youth] funded by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.) People who are feeding animals frequently want to feed a "complete" feed--a feed that includes all of the nutrients an animal requires. Example: dog food. You don't want Bowser running down kids in the neighborhood to supplement the meager protein requirement you feed him: you want him to get all the nutrition he requires from his bowl. In the same way, most cat owners don't want little Fiona sneaking out to hunt down the local rodent population just because there isn't enough "meat, and meat byproducts" in her Fancy Feast. (In case you're curious, a "meat byproduct" is what goes crunch when little Fiona does manage to eat one of the local rodents.)
Are you with me so far? If you live in the urban jungle you may not think of animal feeds beyond dogs and cats. And while that business is not small, there is also a huge business in other animal feeds. Think of cows, horses, chickens, and turkeys. In a nutshell, "chicken feed isn't chicken feed." Animal feeds are a multi-billion dollar business--and a major cost component for a feed manufacturer is the cost of the vitamin supplements included in the feed.
So the manufacturers get together...
It has been illegal for many years, in the United States, for manufacturers to compare prices or sales practices for common customers. But price and/or market collusion was not illegal in many other countries--and a number of multinational companies got a bit clever. If it wasn't illegal to collude on pricing in Switzerland (and in the 1980s it was not) you simply met with your counterparts in Switzerland, agreed on your prices and markets, and shook hands. According to a friend who was involved in some of these meetings (in Switzerland) everybody benefited: the people involved made their sales quotas, kept their profits up, and were spared the headaches of having to endure real competition. Sure--the customers (and ultimately the consumer) got rooked, but that was a "political issue." My friend (a U.K. citizen) assured me that Americans were far too zealous about such things. All of that ended when the U.S. government found out about it--Hoffman LaRoche, a Swiss company, settled for $500 million; BASF ("we don't make the products you buy, we just make them cost more") agreed to a fine of $250 million; other companies involved paid lesser amounts.
Want to know more?
One of the really cool things about the Web in general, and SlashDot in particular, is the ability to click on a link and go off on a tangent--learning something you'd never even thought of before. This link connects to a law firm involved in the matter.
Why is it that people believe any old lie no matter how silly.
He did not have any sort of a program in it's infancy. He used to have lots of chemical weapons (we gave him the knowhow). He used them during the Reagan Admnistration (you may want to read up on that).
After the first gulf war he was ordered to dismantle both his nuclear programs and his stockpiles of chemical weapons. He destroyed the nuclear program under the watch of the weapons inspectors. Both Hans Blix and Mohammed albredaei (sp?) have documented this phase. They also claim that they destroyed all the chemical weapons but not all of the destruction was documented. That's why a second round of inspections were ordered. During those inspections every single scientist interviewed stated that they destroyed the chemicals. They told the inspectors where the destruction took place. The inspectors found evidence of destruction but it was impossible to determine exactly how much was destroyed.
Those are the facts. I know they don't fit everybodies ideology but they are facts nevertheless.
It may be that not all the weapons were destroyed but it's highly unlikely that those chemicals are still viable. Even if they exist they are probably inert by now. If he had them we would have used them.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
Hmm...
I have to disagree with you because MS has all most all of the desktop market. How about what MS has done too:
DR-DOS - Would not run under 95 because of a TSR that look for DR-DOS
Stacker - Added to DOS 6.0 to kill them
Netscape - IE for FREE with OS
OS/2 - OS2 and Win 3.1 was going to come out at the same time. MS did not wait.
Lotus 123 - The OS is not done until Lotus does not run.
Word Perfect - Lets give Word with the OS to lock people in.
Java - Lets change the stander so MS JAVA would not run on any other platform.
Is Real Audio or Google next?
If there was five large companies making an OS systems, I would now have a problem with them adding new stuff. But when one company has 90% of the market and killing anyone else that might have a good idea. I have a real problem with them.
If you look at the pricing of MS it is starting to come down because of Linux. I have seen MS paid to fix problems with their systems because the company was going to switch to Linux for that service. There servers are going over slower to Linux now. It would have been faster if MS was not helping.
I think the writing is on the wall we just need to wait.