U.S. Lobbied EU Over Microsoft Fine

ukhackster writes "European commissioner Neelie Kroes has claimed that she was lobbied by the US government over the Microsoft antitrust case. ZDNet UK is reporting that Kroes 'did not appreciate' being asked to be 'nicer' to Microsoft. Given that Microsoft was fined 280m euros, perhaps this tactic backfired." From the article: "The commissioner criticised the approach. 'This is of course an intervention which is not possible,' Kroes told Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad this week. When asked if she was annoyed by the Embassy's approach, she said 'In my work, I cannot have a preference. I have, however, a personal opinion, but that is for Saturday night.'"

Comments

Re:Huh?

[bmajik]

I am not one for political conspiracies, but I do have some questions, since you seem to have firm opinions on this matter

- as i understand it, in the US, anti-trust revolves around demonstrated consumer harm. i beleive that the court failed to demonstrate any harm was done to consumers by Microsoft. All that aside, in your opinion, what harm have they done to consumers?

- what constitutes a "wrist slap" in this case? What would have been an "appropriate" punishment, and on what grounds?

- Can you describe the bit about Gates lying in federal court? What do you know that an entire army of lawyers doesn't? Someone could have made quite a career for themselves if there'd been enough evidence to put Gates behind bars. Don't you think they would have if the opportunity had been there?

No Bias Against Microsoft By EU? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of the EU's decision-making and litigation policy regarding the Microsoft case has been... suspicious to say the least. I'm no Microsoft fanboi - ALL OPERATING SYSTEMS SUCK - but it really seems like a case of "Let's bash Microsoft no matter what they do." There has been some evidence of collusion between the EU and competitors, documents hidden by the court, and outright bias by the court. Some of the outrageous demands that the EU has placed on M$ are ridiculous to say the least, and have nothing to do with "monopoly".
 
While I'm all for *nix and FOSS projects, a lot of this whole process seems to be driven by the EU's motivation to get some blood-money and dictate ever-changing terms to a corporation rather than the interests of its citizens. The EU is, BTW, not exactly known for their pro-American stances on many things - and would like to see America and American business socialized like their economy.

Microsoft's accusations of EU Court collusion are interesting reading to say the least:
MS Supplementary Response (16 Pages - PDF WARNING)
as covered in EETimes:
Microsoft accuses EU of collusion, bias

Re:Huh?

[bmajik]

I asked 3 specific questions of the original poster and got 2 very frothy-mouthed rants that do not clearly answer any of the questions i asked. I also got modded "Troll" for simply asking questions. Nice :)

They point is THEY ARE CRIMINALS, they have been proven to have BROKEN THE LAW in multiple countries and the EU is the first to do anything meaningful to them. If we are going to debate this we need to start with the premise that they are guilty, as it is public record they are, and go from there.

Guilty of what though? I seem to recall they were found guilty on some counts and not guilty of others. Being specific about the charges they were found guilty of and the degree of each charge is important in having a meaningful discussion.

I've also broken the law in multiple countries (speeding tickets in the US and Germany) but it is still possible to have a rational discourse about "what should be done" with me based on a reasonable understanding of the nature and severity of my offenses. I am not charged and sentenced based on how much I am or am not "liked" by slashdot (thankfully, although my fans/freaks ratio is still > 1 :)) - my punishment has to be based on some legally solid justification.

They promote lock in to their system, use their new lock-in to promote their other business interests etc. They spend lots of money promoting standards and then do not follow them so consumers and left hanging. The very definition of a monopoly no?

Monopoly in and of itself is not illegal in the United States. The crime of "monopoly maintenance", which I beleive is one of the charges Microsoft was found innocent of, I beleive has to do with abusing monopoly powers in a way that is detrimental to consumers or the public. I've asked before and continue to do so now - in what way was Microsoft's behvior detrimental to the public? There is no evidence of price fixing, etc which are the normal hallmarks of monopolistic damage to consumers.

Granted, the EU has different laws about monopolies that also protect competing businesses; in those legal waters it is much more plausible that Microsoft is guilty of "something". However, neither the United States government, nor anyone on slashdot has ever made a convincing case that consumers were harmed by any intentional or side-effect of Microsoft's behavior, in any market or locale.

If you want specific examples how about them buying competing software companies, shutting them down, raping the pension funds to cover the cost of the acquisition leaving the employees with nothing, shutting down the company as "unneeded" and then adding a remarkably similar feature to windows. Shall I go on?

Actually I'd be interested in this, since I work at an office of an MS acquisition and one of my best friends came from an MS acquisition. That is to say, "what you describe has not been our experience". I don't mean to say that it doesn't or hasn't happened, but since I'd not heard of this I'd love a link or two giving me an overview of the basis of this complaint.

Although I don't see that that is a business practice that has anything to do with consumers. It'd be one thing if they bought/killed a competitor, then raised their price on a competing product. I don't know that there's any evidence of that ever happening.