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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.'"
Abuse of monopoly power.
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
Make no mistake. Microsoft is a criminal organization. When you buy their products, you are doing business with a convicted monopoly abuser; you are doing business with a company that has yet to have its crimes properly addressed.
Having a monopoly is itself not a crime. What microsoft did and was found guilty of then, and continues to do now most certainly is.
WRONG. Thank you for playing.
Microsoft products are utter crap. They are, and have always been, 10 years behind everyone else. Microsoft got where they are by establishing a choke-hold on the PC-clone OEM market and by very clever lock-in with formats and protocols. This led to application network effects, which greatly increases the inertia of the first two.
Any given MacBook off the shelf today is in every way vastly superior to any given Windows notebook. Server space is no better. One application per Windows server? Sweet fancy Moses, what junk. People keep buying Microsoft products because of one of the three reasons I listed: it's either no choice from vendors, no choice because of interoperability problems, or no choice because your applications only run on Windows. No one chooses Microsoft because it's the best technology out there, and no one will choose alternatives simply because they are better.
No, the only way to "beat" Microsoft (directly) is to have government chop off Microsoft's hands so that they can no longer strangle the marketplace. If that's not done, then eventually the market will move in a direction Microsoft wasn't expecting and they'll be irrelevant in the new space. (This may have already happened, we'll see.)
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Tom are you calling me, the OP to your response a "US troll"? Is that what you're saying there? Because thats what I read it as and I want to be very clear on that before I do something stupid like calling you a douchebag. Read the post again asshat, I specifically stated the only reason I would WANT to see something like that is for the sheer debacle of the decision and its consequences. I even stated it would never happen, because... uhhh it would never F'NG HAPPEN! Why the hell would MS lose its marketshare in a demographic the size of a freakin' continent. You EU illiterates should at least try to comprehend the language you respond in.