EU Antitrust Troubles Continue For Microsoft

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 16, 2009 @05:07PM from the still-on-the-hook dept.

Julie188 writes "Opera Software's year-old antitrust complaint against Microsoft took another step toward being vindicated, and the Oslo-based browser maker can't help crowing over the European Commission's decision. Opera had filed a complaint with the EC in December, 2007, contending that Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows violated antitrust rules. Yesterday, the EC sent a 'Statement of Objections (SO)' to Microsoft with a preliminary finding that bundling IE with Windows does indeed constitute an antitrust abuse. Microsoft has eight weeks to plead its case and change the EC's mind, an unlikely outcome if ever there was one. Opera's CEO said, 'On behalf of all Internet users, we commend the Commission for taking the next step towards restoring competition in a market that Microsoft has strangled for more than a decade.'"

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Re:Microsoft products ARE better by WiiVault · 2009-01-16 19:32 · Score: 1, Troll

I respect your point, however I do think that monopolistic anti-competitive practices by nature ARE anti-consumer. You also forgot to mention the Mac, which I think is certainly a better desktop. You are not obliged to agree, however I think the UI and various MS "enhancements" presented in Vista show that clearly MS believes that they have some catching up to do. Lets not forget that IE became dominant through the illegal leveraging of Windows. Yes it was better then the competition, but because they cheated.