Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Loses EU Anti-Trust Appeal
Kugrian writes "Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute. The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position."
The biggest problem is that it took 10 years to get to this point, and Microsoft still hasn't disclosed the specs for how to make interoperable products. We're fortunate that the Free Software way of doing things is rebost enough to survive in spite of this, but profit-oriented companies simply can't hold out long enough for this kind of legal system to really help.
What we need is clear legal rules that vendors with dominant market positions must adhere to genuinely open standards for all protocols and document formats, and of course we also need a genuinely non-corrupt standardization organization Microsoft doesn't sell us something as an "open standard" which really isn't.
...given the size of MS coffers.
Of more significance is the fact that MS will be forced to release more code to allow competitors to compete on a level playing field with MS applications...
So $690 million is nice for damages, but without a monitor, will any of the sanctions stick?
I mean $690 million is almost a rounding error at Microsoft.
Just like the browser wars any competing media player had to fight against one that was installed on just about every PC anyway. An advantage MS used to sell their WM tech. Unfortunately as somebody already pointed out, it was too little, too late and more of a symbolic gesture. Other parts of the ruling (documenting the APIs) were more important.
XP(N) was just a side effect that MS milked for propaganda purposes (Look at those stupid eurocrats! Noone wants a crippled Windows, they just want to punish a successful company, stupid socialist French, yaddayadda)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
You say you want competition in a free market. You start out with a bunch of competitors. But every competing company strives to become a monopoly to ensure profits, it's not a secret. In the long run, one of them dominates the market and becomes such a monopoly, it's not a surprise outcome. Then you turn around and declare that to be illegal. You split the company up or write fines. Which leaves you not with the desired competitive atmosphere but a wounded monopoly, still a monopoly nevertheless. This goes on in every sector, until some catastrophic event like war or financial crisis. At which point you call in the state to fix everything up. You get state investments. And then, in the spirit of capitalism, the state will privatize these, because a free competitive market is better. Back to square 1. Repeat.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
I knew a guy who was well off. He'd water his lawn during droughts, and pay the fine every time. It was nothing to him, as he carelessly wasted water that other people needed to drink. Our areas reservoir dropped by a record 12 feet that year. Did he care about the hundreds of fines he recieved? Not a bit.
Fining Microsoft is much the same case, it means nothing. Barely a blip on their radar. You want to really penalize them, start trustbusting. "Oh, I'm sorry Microsoft, you cannot sell your OS within our territory with Media Player, you must bundle it with this other player. Oh, it costs you $25 per copy to bundle it? Too bad, oh, and you now are under price-restrictions as well, and you have to drop the price of Windows to boot. I figure $5 OEM cost. What was that, you'd be loosing $20 for every machine that ships with Windows? Well, it is your choice weither you sell it to OEM's now, isn't it? Now let's talk about Internet Explorer, shall we?"
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Surprise surprise, a European court punished a company for breaking the law. Don't blame the EU for not slapping them on the wrist like the USA did. Perhaps if the USA enforced its own laws properly then it wouldn't have been necessary for the EU to pursue this case.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
It a mainstay of classic economic thought that competition is good and monopolies are bad, the classical definition of monopoly was actually 25%. The problem with having companies have more than that is that they start to wield control over the rest, their size allows them to game access to customers and suppliers.
You argument seems to stem from the misbelief that Operating System software is a competitive market and that Microsoft got to 90% by competing fairly. If so then you would be very wrong.
If you read today's judgement, you will see that Microsoft has regularly abused its' position by bundling, threats, bribes, agreements with OEMs and so on.
Operating Systems is not a competitive market at all, if you use Linux then you will know that the biggest problem is not Windows itself but the fact that it is so dominant. As soon as you use Linux you find that shops, ISPs, firms, manufacturers and so on treat you as a second class citizen. This needs to be broken for the social good.
My little Linux and tech blog
"Once illegal abuse has been removed and competitors are
free to compete on the merits, the logical consequence of that
would be to expect Microsoft's market share to fall," spokesman
Jonathan Todd said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKL1720058720070917?rpc=44
I'm no big fan of Microsoft but the statements made by the EU spokes-people are more wishful thinking than reality. Even with "fair" competition Microsoft will still dominate due to the strong network effect inherent in operating systems used by the general public.
Personally I think this latest verdict will do little to nothing in the real word, and most of its value lies in the precedent it sets. Microsoft is a huge company, with deep pockets, good lawyers and used to dealing with lawsuits. If they get hammered, get fined, appeal, and lose again, then any company is subject to the same if they break anti-competitive rules. It also re-affirms that EU courts at least have the power to kick ass if need be. For all that, this verdict is very significant.
Other than that, I'd just like to congratulate mrs. Neelie Kroes for a long, hard job well done. She was always known in my country (the Netherlands) for being the exact opposite of a push-over (and many disliked her for that very reason), but where she is now, you need someone with exactly that personality.
So Neelie Kroes: we congratulate you, and bow to you! Bring out the champagne! (hey, if nothing else, pulling several 100 millions from Microsoft's pockets isn't a bad thing ;-)
Sadly, and as one would expect, this all comes too late to make any difference to MediaPlayer's market share.
Perhaps the obligation to publish interfaces will bear fruit, but only if MS get appropriately punished in a timely manner when what they initially publish turns out to bear no relation to what is actually in 'doze, or does relate to it, but doesn't actually contain sufficient information to get the job done.
In the mean time, the BBC have handed control of their on-line content over to MS in the form of the BBC iPlayer, which relies on MS DRM. By the time that the EU notices that, they'll have killed off the currently vibrant set-top box market, and the bulk of them will be running some form of WinCE. At least that's the danger, which people a need to get excited about now if it's not to come to pass.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
the EU is not a business, it's a government. so i would say it's not so bad securing jobs and wealth for all the involved countries of the EU, as it is securing money for yourself as a business.
The problem isn't "bundling products", the problem is intentional leverage of market share to maintain more market share.
After all, Windows Media player is offered free...
I seriously doubt that you are an economics major.