Slashdot Mirror
EU Official Labels Microsoft's Behavior Unacceptable
InfoWorldMike writes "EU commissioner Neelie Kroes has lashed out at Microsoft in comments to European parliamentarians Thursday, saying it is 'unacceptable' that the company continues to gain market share using tactics that were outlawed in the Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against the software vendor. 'Three years later Microsoft still hasn't complied with the main demand imposed by the European antitrust ruling: that the company share interoperability information inside Windows at a reasonable price to allow rival makers of workgroup servers to build products that work properly with PCs running Windows.'"
...and until someone actually gets serious and imposes a penalty against them that will actually induce them to change their behavior, like preventing them from selling their products until they comply, this is what's going to continue to happen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why is it that only Europe is standing up to them?
I mean, who do the EU think they are, forcing an Ireland-based company like Microsoft to comply with EU laws!
...
Next thing you know they'll fine them - again - for beaucoup Euros
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
> Let the marketplace decide...
Firstly you need a competitive market for that to work, that's why we have competition laws. Secondly, this idea that free markets are some democratizing force is total bullshit.
HTH.
I think it is impossible to comply unless MS opens source code to share.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Because they don't have any successful tech companies of their own to boss around?
...
Hmmm. I'll just ignore all the medical genetics, biochemistry, and biotech labs running Mandriva and SuSe then, shall I?
OK if I take back those HIV vaccines from the world and the genome sequences that Cambridge did, too? And you don't need those heart medications for your cloned beef
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
> Europe is trying to force its socialist business practices on the the free world.
Where is this free world and what do you call it when the US uses the WTO to dictate trade policy for the rest of the world?
Microsoft are free to stop breaking the law anytime they please.
The Americans also ruled that MS used unfair practices, and they also kept buying their stuff. So what are you implying?
-- Cheers!
The problem is that European regulators can't introduce competition into the marketplace by throwing out MS. There is nobody who can step up and replace them. All of the software that runs on Windows depends on Windows, and there is no competitor that runs windows software without a hitch. If the EU said, "OK Microsoft, no more sales in Europe for you!" then all of the European computer users would hate the EU for taking away their software, and there would have no replacement.
In order for siome company to create a competing OS that can actually run Windows software well enough, MS would have to release their specs. That's why the EU is playing softball -- ultimately they need MS' co-operation for there to even *be* a competitor. If MS leaves or is thrown out of the market, the users are SOL.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Bill has correctly figured it out that it is better to cheat,steal, and lie, pay a hefty fine later and OWN the market than it is to play fair. The longer that a gov. takes to play these games with MS is only to MS's advantage. If EU really wanted to stop this, they would tell MS if you have 1 month and then we charge you 5 x all of the EU sales/month each month. Only when it is not in Bill Gates best advantage will he comply.
Since it has been 3 years and MS has not complied, it is obvious to me that EU will not really be cracking down.
I may not like BG but you have to admire him. He knows how to run circles around govs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The only way to "beat" Microsoft is to come out with something better. No amount of fines will really matter as long as they still hold the dominant market share.
The reason is that people creating software for computers have the greatest number of opportunities if they make them windows compatible. And since making something cross-platform is a bitch, it's much easier to get 90% of the market by doing windows alone. And so that's what people and companies will do.
So we can either do one of two things
1) Force people to develop cross platform software and hardware (yeah right)
2) Create an operating system so much better that the majority adopts it (extremely unlikely, but better than "yeah right")
The only other thing I can think of is FORCE companies like Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony, IBM, Lenovo, Gateway etc to stop forcing Windows down our throats on computers we buy from them and sell the bare machine at a REDUCED price. I'm sure Microsoft is strong-arming some of them to some degree, but if we just flat out make it illegal to force-preload then they have little choice.
Question everything
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Why is this so hard for certain people to understand?
That trying to legislate a market for Microsoft's competitors is a waste of time?
I've had the same notion in my mind a long time, but the parent has said it more succinctly than I ever could have.
Europe seems to be viciously attacking most American(Capitalist) software companies - Google, Microsoft, and Apple have all three had suits brought against them. Every last one has lost, too. After a point, I wonder if they're really preventing monopolistic practices are just preventing competition altogether.
You do realize Europe is consists of over half a billion people right? Computers have become ordinary products, leaving such a market would be corporate suicide... Now one of the Main goals of the EU is to defend the customer, all the EU are doing is what they were appointed to do. Such antitrust lawsuits are common places, be it a US company or not. Believe it or not it's not the task of the EU to ruin Microsoft, their task is to defend competition amongst companies inside the European market. Hell this would benefit many American companies as well and that's a good thing. The whole point is to allow customers to have the best solution for the best price, where that solution comes from is of absolute no importance.
Why can't Sun do the same thing with servers on its own without government interference???
...well I'm not sure I agree with this argument. In the larger context of what happened, it seems to me you're argument goes something like:
It just doesn't quite make sense to me. IE's total dominance of the browser market was a bad thing that could have and should have been prevented. It's not over. Firefox still doesn't have a huge market share, and it's still a fight to get Microsoft to adhere to web standards.
But to answer your question more specifically, there's a reason why Sun can't really do "the same thing with servers": HTML is an open standard that other people could build browsers against. Microsoft's SMB/CIFS/Active Directory/Exchange are not open standards, and people are forced to reverse-engineer ways to interface with these things. And let's not forget that Microsoft can change these things on a whim, push updates out, and screw up anyone trying to reverse engineer things.
.. feel free to throw some rotton eggs at him. One thing though, when he is in Europe he doesnt dance about like a monkey spreading his BO of death, he actually is calm and business like. While he is here he will be "leveraging" his demands to various government officials and using the businesses he has aquired there as a bargining chip like he has done over software patents. Do as I want or I close shop and you have to pay unemployment, and lose the tax, and so on. Thats how he does business. He also will have the press in tow. He really does love his tours of self importance.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
If MS wants to sell to Europe, then they have to deal with European laws. Unless you think that a corporation should be above the law.
MS starting giving away their browser to compete for Netscapes, whose browser was NOT FREE.
I think you are misremembering (not a criticism, thinks were fast and furious back then). Netscape would allow you to give them money if you really wanted to, but it was also a free download, and was also bundled everywhere. Netscape was definitely using the "give away the product and make up the difference in volume" Internet model.
Both browsers were a piece of crap then, but the is irrelevant to the discussion.
No, Netscape really was a buggy piece of crap. Remember, Netscape had an enormous lead over IE... in the 90s of percent. Everyone switched because IE was so much better, especially when it came to speed.
Using you monopoly power to destroy a competitor is illegal.
And yet, Opera does OK in this IE-dominated world. Netscape died because their product sucked, and they were also trying to take advantage of a non-natural market. It was like trying to sell TCP/IP stacks on top of windows. Those companies used to exist, by the way. They don't anymore, and no one cries for them because Microsoft started "bundling" TCP/IP as part of the operating system. Same with the browser -- A browser is a natural utility of an operating system these days.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The EU only wants to regulate the way US credit card companies deal with EU citizens.
Welcome to the global community. All the EU is saying is that a fair set of rules need to be put in place so that people don't get abused. What EU proposes against Microsoft would help US companies too, it is just that the US goverment lacks the balls to do this.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The US government is a completely gutless pet of the plutocracy that really rules the country, so unless there is dramatic change of regime nothing will happen there.
The rest of the world, except the EU (it seems) doesn't really care because they are too primitive to to realize that being dependent on a single US company is a problem.
The funny thing is that the EU has a very simple solution to the MS problem; simply fine MS 10000 EUR / day / undocumented protocol identified and use the resulting money hire 10-20 hackers pr. protocol to reverse engineer it and publish the docs.
Anyone should be allowed to submit protocols, if MS has implemented both a server and a client then it needs to be documented.
Ideally this principle should extend to other areas as well, there are tons of secret protocols that do nothing more than serve as a weapon of vendor lockin.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Devils advocate: At least people have a choice to buy Microsoft products or not. They don't have the choice to not be subject to the EU or its laws. They won't even have the first choice if the EU stops Microsoft selling its products in Europe.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
You US trolls still don't get it that the EU is the largest common market, bigger than the US market, do you? Walking away from a market that size is a suicide move for a company that relies on monopoly and lock-in for survival.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
And believe it or not, if it actually were game over for MS in the EU, all that precious windos-only software would be ported to OSX, Linux, etc. in record time. The EU market is huge, larger than the US market. Any company producing software would make sure it's available in that market, windos or no windos.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org