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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.'"
Microsoft goes from a 30-40% share of the market to 60-75% share, and the EU concludes that this is completely due to its "unfair" practices? And yet, Europeans continue to purchase more and more MS products... This just harkens back to the ruling the EU made that MS had to remove Internet Explorer because it was anti-competitive to give away software... boggles the mind. Let the marketplace decide... MS gets lazy with IE, and the next thing you know the hottest browser on the market is Firefox. Why can't Sun do the same thing with servers on its own without government interference???
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
But I would like to see what would happen if Microsoft just said "We're not changing our practices, so we won't sell our products in Europe." Would computer users revolt against the EU? Would they be angry at MS instead? Meh, it'll never happen but sometimes just to watch the debacle of it all, I wish it would.
ever heard of SAP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG
It's interesting how every time there's a news story of EU slapping Microsoft for breaking EU laws, the slashdotters suddenly come out siding with Microsoft.
:)
Never mind that they were bashing Microsoft just one news story below and complaining how monopolistic and evil Microsoft is
Isn't it about time we updated the /. icon for Microsoft?
Bill Gates has aged a *lot* since the current one was made. I suggest using something like OLD MAN as a base.
Your attitude is infectious...
Sorry to ruin your point with facts, but Microsoft donates to both parties. And as it happens, since 2002, MS has actually given quite a bit more to the Democrats than it has to the Republicans: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D00 0000115&Name=Microsoft+Corp
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Because they don't have any successful tech companies of their own to boss around?
That's arguable. Europe funded DARPA, in other words, it's as responsible for the Internet as much as the United States is.
Europe virtually ignored the tech industry for decades...
On the contrary, I don't know what happened in the other European countries, but in France for instance -- they spent huge amounts of money on research, education, and IT infrastructure. In 1986 for example, it was already achieving a 95% penetration rate of households by giving away free network computers (the Minitel) to anyone who asked. In 1987, ecommerce was already very developed in France, you could already buy pretty much anything on it, and the government was at the forefront of this.
Sadly, this is probably why France still has a dismal showing on the internet. It spent so much money on its national infrastructure, that it kept a stranglehold on its telecommunication monopoly -- so it could recoup its losses. Also, all the innovations that happened were done by (or through) the French government -- which later turned out to be a bad idea. The Minitel network was controlled and regulated by one company, the French telecom. It was a smart network. All its innovations were made at the center of its network, or with the explicit permission of that company. Most people at the nodes were forbidden to mess with it. So in that sense, the French government didn't understand the power of the dumb network and prevented the innovation of the masses.
You're just forgetting one small detail: the person decding if Microsoft complied with interoperabilty demands was picked from a shortlist that Microsoft themselves provided. In essence Microsoft to pick the own jury with no intervention and yet they failed. I belive that speaks volumes.
Linux isn't Finnish. Probably more of the kernel is created in America than in Finland. Linus Torvalds didn't write even close to all of Linux. Any large open source project probably has developers from multiple countries.
Clinton followed SOP, namely, replacing many prosecutors as he entered office.
Bush followed SOP, namely, replacing many prosecutors as he entered office. Later, years later, he fired prosecutors for investigating corrupt Republicans and for refusing to investigate obviously fabricated allegations against Democrats. The difference is not hard to comprehend.
Nice try. Play again?
Where is the punishment already? Stop whining and get an injunction to ban all microsoft product imports and sales until they comply with the rulings of the court.