EU Launches Yet Another Antitrust Probe Into Microsoft

Connor writes "The EU has announced a new wide-ranging antitrust probe into Microsoft's practices of bundling software with Windows, as well as whether its products interoperate sufficiently with competitors' products. 'The first area of investigation will concern interoperability of some of Microsoft's products, including Office 2007, the .NET Framework, and some of Microsoft's server products.' The other prong of the investigation is a response to Opera's antitrust complaint, but will look at other products, too. 'The Commission will also look at desktop search and Windows Live as well in addition to other products. The EC says that its investigation will "focus on allegations that a range of products have been unlawfully tied to sales of Microsoft's dominant operating system."'"

Comments

enough?

[Ogive17]

Does anyone else think enough is enough? I'm not an expert with Opera or Windows but from what I've read Opera seems to work well with Windows (some will claim even better than IE). To me this sounds like the creators of Opera are not happy their market share isn't has high as they'd like, so they hopped on the "blame Microsoft for the world's problems" bandwagon and are hoping the Socalist leaning EU will give them some handouts.

Will the EU keep pecking away at M$ until the company is forced to break up and become a non-factor... then go after the company that takes it's place (google)?

Re:Oh, No, Not again!

[MightyMartian]

It's not that they work well together, but that they intentionally break means by which other software can work well with them. Exhibit A is the mutilation of Kerberos.

Nothing like the Redmond Apologist crowd? So what did they give you to turn?

Re:Whats wrong with including apps anyways?

[jorghis]

And how on earth are they supposed to include the apps their users expect without "using your OS monopoly to out-compete other app vendors"?

Re:Ironic

[MightyMartian]

I wonder if/when governments are going to start going after Apple. OS X is 10x "worse" than Windows when it comes to bundled software. I use "worse" lightly, of course, because I actually want bundled software.

There's a certain class of posters on /. that I can only assume to be mental retards, because even the most basic of concepts seems to illude them.

Apple is not a monopoly, you moron. Monopolies are constrained in their behavior in ways that other companies are not. This isn't a difficult concept, and I'm sure it's not the first time it's been introduced to you, so I can only conclude that you have a cretin-grade IQ.