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Deadline Looming for Microsoft in Antitrust Case
gaijincory writes "The International Herald Tribune reminds us that the end of the month is Microsoft's deadline to comply with the European Commission's antitrust ruling. The fine for non-compliance? A cool $5 million per day."
they probably pay their team of lawyers more than that per day.
Microsoft has an average daily global sales revenue of $100 million. $5 million is about 5% of their global sales. Their profit margins far exceed 5%, therefore they could continue to pay their daily fine to the E.U. and still make a profit every day.
Also, the E.U. already fined them about $600 million in addition to the prospective daily fine. Thats the same as about four months worth of the daily $5 million fine.
actually microsoft paid 4.028 billion in taxes in 2004.. Atleast according to their annual report... I suppose they could have all accountanted it up or something..
As for the EU's inability to get their member states to vote favorably on the Constitution, many believe this has more to do with Europeans' sentiments about their national leaders which are pushing the Constitution through.
Have you tried reading the draft constitution? Seriously, they need to scrap it and start again. Not because it's bad but because it's barely comprehensible. You can pick bits and pieces you like or dislike and try to sell it on that but trying to sell the thing as a whole is impossible - anyone who pays attention will say "no" simply because they don't understand what they're being asked to agree to.
IBM was investigated in the 70's and 80's as a monopoly. During this timeframe MS came to be and it's likely Bill Gates took alot from the proceedings. IBM basically outlasted the government, (although it lost the market share that underlay the investigation) and, at one point submitted a warehouse of unindexed hardcopy in lefthanded compliance with the courts. MS was wetnursed by Big Blue and might have the same willingness to play chicken with big government.
You might want to do a little reading before spouting off. EU law supercedes the law of member states when the 2 come into conflict. The recent developments in the IR35 debacle in the UK are a fine example.
This is why, as per the article you mention above, there is a lot of dissent among member states about what the constitution is, they are agreeing to that law for themselves.
Further, my understanding is that the policies with regard to monopolies and competition have already been agreed upon, hence, the 'European competition regulator' whose existence is made possible by The Treaty Establishing The European Community, article 81, at least I think it is 81. Either way, there is a list of what is already in play from that treaty with respect to fair competition here.
Take a glance at The EU online, and I would strongly suggest you do a modicum of research before spurting disinformation presented as fact.
People like you piss me off.
Obviously this is up for amendment at any time, but "Although the amount of fine should act as a sufficient deterrent to firms, it may not under any circumstances exceed 10% of their worldwide turnover."
The appropriate Guidelines
I don't know what newspapers you read, but MS does pay a dividend and has been settling these lawsuits. Perhaps the shareholders are complaining.
Sigh, no one ever bothers to read the news:
t buyback21.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/182966_msf
All those years of paying for growth with new shares is coming back to bite Microsoft. Although the insiders look like they will be able to cash out and leave others holding the bag.
This fine would be major. MS has been cutting a billion or so each quarter over the past year just to meet street numbers and keep the stock from tanking.
I wonder what the EU would do if Microsoft decided to fight back? What's preventing them from taking a page from IBM's playbook and firing people, mostly in Europe, to make up for the $5 million a day? I'm not sure how many employees Microsoft has in Europe, but it would likely put a serious dent in that $5 million.
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
The fine is 5% of their global sales, not EU sales. How much does their activities in EU account for?
I don't know, but it may make doing business in EU a cost, or a non/low-profit activity whose sole purpose is to maintain the world dominance.
Staying in EU may then only be motivated by the domino theory: If one country shifts to the "evil" side (that is whatever is oposed to Microsoft) then others will follow.
The alternative for Microsoft is to pass on the bill to the customers increasing the incensitive to using something more economically viable.
The Commission also instructed Microsoft to license confidential Windows code to competitors, allowing them to produce server software that works with Windows Full of shit! The Commission never instructed Microsoft to produce a single line of "code". Juste communication protocols. The IHT is basically refurbishing Microsoft propaganda and spinning an anti-business view of the Commission. sad.
The fine mentioned by the EU is up to 5% of Microsoft's worldwide sales (the absolute maximum according to EU law is 10%). As they currently make about 100 million a day, that translates to about 5 million. I expect that more than 5% of their worldwide sales come from the EU, so they probably make more than 5 million a day in Europe.
This is mentioned briefly in the article. Compliance requires basically two things: distribute Windows without the Media Player and document the API or protocols used in some server products so that competitors can create products that can talk to Microsoft's products.
Personally, I am more interested in the second requirement as it could be beneficial to Linux and free/open source software. I also heard that the EU is not happy with the way Microsoft handled that part (restrictive licensing for the documentation) so there is hope that they will force Microsoft to be more open.
-Raphaël
Especially rich and powerful graffiti artists, as long as they're rich enough to buy whole countries.
And judges tend to be wary of slapping someone too hard when that person pretty much owns their boss.
Why do you think Gates and MS are so happy to give the finger so often and so liberally? Because no-one will ever dare to call them out on it - the worst that happens is sanctions against MS that then get argued down on appeal, creatively "misunderstood" or just blatantly ignored.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
They have already. This article is about opening up some of their protocols e.g. Samba. Opening these up would hurt Microsoft much more than having to sell a WMP-less version of Windows that nobody will buy.
Monopolies are bad for consumers, so the rules change when you're a monopoly.
If I make 1% of all cars on the road, and decide to 'bundle' the cars with a certain roadmap, that's OK. Other mapmakers can still compete, consumers still have choice, that choice allows them to exert pressure on the mapmakers to improve their product. This is how capitalism is supposed to work: consumers vote with their wallets to make producers compete.
If I make 90% of all cars on the road and do the same bundling, other mapmakers are effectively excluded from the market. Consumers no longer have any choice, therefore no way to exert pressure on the mapmaker to improve the product.
As an example, plot the 'growth' in IE. During BrowserWar1 (IE vs Netscape) IE improved in leaps and bounds. Then it was mostly dormant for a few years (except for patches). Now, with BrowserWar2 (IE vs Firefox) IE is being improved again (IE7 is being released with tabbed browsing).
competition = choice = power for consumers = better products
monopoly = no choice = powerless consumers = stagnation
there's been cartels punished in the same way regularly in eu(copper, pulp? others?) - with fines going up to same areas. ms will pay when they've exhausted the legal means of countering it.
btw, ms wouldn't need to pay - eu could just TAKE the money from them. if ms would continue to do nothing it could eventually be barred from operating... who knows, if they gave the finger long enough maybe even exempt them from any copyright protections. would that suck, eh?
you think ms doesn't pay taxes in eu?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Nonsense. 5M$/day is the maximum fine. Maybe they want to increase it, but they can't.
Don't forget that majority in EU parliament and commision are leftist parties (socialists, greens).
The EU Parliament has 729 members, 201 (Socialist Group) + 42 (Group of the Greens) + 41 (Confederal Group of the European United left) = 284 members = 39% can be considered 'Left'. That's not a majority. Check Members of the European Parliament it yourself.
<SARCASM> 39% ; in the US of A they call a group that large a 'moral majority' </SARCASM>
Media player is just one of the many things they needed to do.
Licencing the patents/technologies to allow other vendors (including opensource) to interoperate with Windows - that is the significant part that they don't want to do, ever.
Man, if only Bill Gates had a nickel for everytime Windows crashed, he could pay his way out...
Well in 2003 there were 593,085,000 PC's. There were 42.8 million PC's sold in Q2 2004, for simplicity lets assume that these sales remain stable for the period Q1 2004 to the end of Q2 2005 - this would equal 256,800,000 PC's baught in this period. I don't have any figures showing how many of these purchases will be replacements rather than new users, therefore I shall be conservative and say 50% are replacements giving a total number of PC's in the world at a very rough estimate by the end of Q2 2005 to be 721,485,000. About 95% of PC's run Windows, therefore the number of Window's PC's in the world at the end of Q2 2005 would equal approximately 685,410,750.
Let us assume that each Window's PC crashes twice per week, worldwide that's 1,370,821,500 windows crashes per week which equals 71,529,465,870 worldwide windows crashes per year.
A Nickel is worth 5 cents, so the amount of money you would receive per crash per year (pcpy) if you had a Nickel for every time Windows crashed would be $3,576,473,293.5, or $3.58 Billion. Windows was released in 1985 so if we assumed that there were a constant number of PC's from 1985 to 2005 that would be $71.53 billion. Of course there weren't as many PC's in 1985 so that figure would actually be a lot lot less.
As Billy No Gates has a personal wealth of over $61 billion it is safe to say that your argument has been proved!
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Actually you are wrong. I do not know the exact figure but Microsoft does have $40-$50 Billion in cash.
The term you are looking for is Market Capitalization which is the value of outstanding shares of Microsoft multiplied by the current stock value. Current MSFT has a MarketCap of $278.5 Billion. Change in the Market cap is caused by change in M$ stock price. Investors cause the change, not the other way around. i.e. If investors are pleased with MSFT they bid the stock price up which raises the MarketCap; if investors are unhappy with MSFT the stock price goes down lowering the MarketCap.
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>> This is EXACTLY one of my points! Can Linux >>compete on a level playing field? By all means, >>strip Windows down to it's bare basics, but if >>you're going to do that, Linux and MacOS and all >>the other operating systems should be required to >>do the same.
Isn't this already done. I mean really folks, Linux is original from www.kernel.org and mirrors and is just a kernel. Red Hat, Suse, Caldera, etc... is not Linux only. It is a combination of software products.
It sounds like the EU is saying:
"We don't know exactly what we want you to do, so make proposals until we tell you one is adequate. By the way, if you don't come up with a proposal we like by the deadline, we're going to fine you."
No, but you can just throw them into the trash, use another program, and your system will run just fine.
While I agree there are certainly worthwhile elements in the EU constitution, I would vote 'no' (if my country hadn't withdrawn a promised referendum on the matter), because it fails to do what it should do: make sure that the EU *IS* a democracy.
It's not about ambitious integration, it's about not integrating enough, in a democratic way. The only part in the whole EU that represents directly the 'populace' is the EU parliament. But, while they get some marginal more power as lipservice, the EC (by any other name) is still the one that makes the law. And, I should remind you, that the EC is a bunch of unelected beaurocrats, who do not represent the people, aren't voted by them into office, and don't have any political responsability towards the EU citizens. Yet, they decide on creating laws that could affect millions of those same EU citizens. Does that strike you as fair, or even reasonable? Not to me. To me, it's complete idiotic and utterly undemocratic. In comparison, the EC ALOS got more power, even more so then the EU, which, in total makes things worse instead of better, in the light of becomming a true democracy.
What one should have done is to abolish the EC and the counsel of ministers, whome both are not voted into the positions they have by the populace - unless by far proxy, but that's no proper way of being democratic. Replace them by a senate, and by a directly voted EU president. And make very clear that cultural/moral/ethical/etc subjects stay a matter of soevereign countries; we don't want a one-taste-for-all blending, after all. So keep the petty regulations about stuff the EU shouldn't mess with away, and concentrate on those things that really DO matter; like forming a united front in matters of foreign diplomacy and the military.
Instead, the current trend of the EU is just the oposite: less democracy, more bureaucrats, more meddling in internal affairs, and remaining weak at just the points we should strive to be stronger.
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