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EU Antitrust Troubles Continue For Microsoft
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.'"
In all likelihood, Microsoft would not actually remove IE, they would just create a registry key that enabled or disabled the web browser functionality. Such a key might already exist, put in place just in case the US government demanded that they remove IE from Windows.
Palm trees and 8
They might be able to get away with obeying the court's decision (provided that is there decision...there's still time for Microsoft to bribe them like they did at ISO for OOXML) for every release of Windows from 7 onward. I somewhat doubt - unless the EU is really that hellbent on punishing Microsoft for all its evil deeds - that the order would be retroactive for all previous versions of the operating system.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
How is the average computer illiterate going to download a browser if Microsoft is not allowed to bundle one? Buy a disc?
IIRC the way Windows XP N was in Europe was that the user was presented with a choice of several non Microsoft media players at first run.
Nobody actually bought N (well, no OEMs, I'm sure a few people did out of principle). My guess is Microsoft tries to offer that as a combined product/SKU with the "no media player" editions and, failing that, it'll get it's own SKU.
They tried that defense (intimately tied to the OS) at the original antitrust trials and an expert was able to remove IE back then in less than an hour.
The FACT that Microsoft has made IE more indespensable to windows, not less, pretty much is giving the Justice Department a big middle finger. No Linux distro I know of nor OS X fundamentally needs it's OS to do updates or anything like that. It's just BS on MS's part.
I hope they get shafted by the EU, since I feel shafted everytime MS forces me to use IE for one of their piddly little tasks.
Microsoft is pretty much a de facto monopoly.
If GM owned 95% of the auto market and somehow used their monopoly position to, say, put a proprietary, patented gas tank in their car that could only be filled at gas stations owned by GM, that would be a much more valid comparison.
Removing IE breaks a lot of functionality in XP, so I doubt they can simply have bundled and unbundled product lines
As other posts pointed out, it's not clear if that's even true. If it is, they can always remove the the browser application, while leaving the browser components in.
But there might be another option. Instead of removing IE, they could bundle other browsers, or an installer that will get other browsers, into the default windows install.
Why does everyone think you need a browser to download something. It's not like HTTP is a protocol made for downloading files.How about FTP, p2p, or an add/remove programs that actually adds programs.
It doesn't have to be hard. I cannot believe so many people on slashdot actually think you need a browser to download a file. A lot of times a browser uses FTP anyway to download something. Now I will agree that most people have become accustomed to having a browser pre-installed. I'll even agree that it can be useful. But it absolutely is not necessary for downloading.
But Mac OS and Linux distros aren't de facto monopolies in the operating system market. If Mac OS came on 95% of computers and Safari was on the machines out of the box, I think the EU would pursue the issue too. It's about using one monopoly/near monopoly position to further another one.
If Microsoft held less than half of the market, I don't think MS would have been the target of the EU for this
Fine. So Canonical, Red Hat, Novell, and the Debian Project are bundling browsers. No-one is saying OEMs shouldn't be able to do the same. The point is that the Linux Foundation isn't the one bundling. Also, the distributions don't tightly integrate Firefox into the rest of the system (in fact, Debian uses Epiphany by default). Removing it is a simple apt-get or yum.
From a ruling in 2001, they are certainly a monopoly, and have abused that status.
Link.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Which is actually not a bad idea. No more having proprietary remotes that are impossible to replace: without tying, remotes would conform to published standards (ideally open and patent free) which would allow choice in the type of remote that you used.
For example, accessible remotes could talk, or have extra large button, and be _guaranteed_ to work with your TV/Video/DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever - instead of the hit-and-miss pot luck you take when purchasing so-called 'universal' remotes these days.
You have unwittingly given a very good example of the problems with tying.
That's not true AT all. IE became dominant because IE 4.x was much, much better than NN was as IE had a fully programmable object model and NN was stuck with a partially programmable one. Remember document.write?
I wish I could forget but that's all grandma will talk about if you mention computers.
And I have mod points...
People are drastically missing the point here. Nobody's punishing Microsoft because they're Microsoft, and nobody's saying you can't bundle a browser with an OS.
The facts are these:
1. You can't leverage a monopoly in another market.
2. Web browsers and operating systems are separate markets.
3. Microsoft has the monopoly on Operating Systems.
4. Microsoft leverages their Windows monopoly to further their browser market share.
So nobody is saying Microsoft can't bundle a browser - they just have to provide options. Make it so you can choose your browser on install, make it so the OEM can choose a browser to bundle with default installs, whatever. Some sort of choice. You can bundle fifty browsers if you want. Just don't bundle your own and only your own.
As of now the problem isn't that Microsoft is bundling a browser, it's that they're bundling only their browser and offering no options to anybody.
Q: How do you know a liberal has lost an argument? A: They start calling you names
Which would make Rush Limbaugh a liberal. It would in fact make the Bush administration liberal throwing the name terrorist around way too freely.
That would make you a liberal as well as a lot of so called conservatives since anyone that doesn't fully agree with their opinions is a socialist, liberal or pinko.
Q: How do you make a liberal sad? A: Remind them of their carbon footprint
Q: How do you make a liberal angry? A: Tell them a Capitalist is making money off their carbon footprint
The biggest problem with this as a whole is it's just baseless name calling from a racist simpleton.
It ignores the fact I'm a conservative but a real one which believes in actual conservatism and not pandering to the South and their huge population of low-IQ, high religion gullible dimwits, like yourself.
Capitalism isn't about breaking laws and shitting all over everyone. Maybe when you understand capitalism then you can start your own business, make a decent living and stop resorting to being a grumpy little racist tit.
The question I have for Obama is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single fat colored mammy sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check?
Far from helping the economy, Microsoft has harmed it. It has reduced competition in the computer industry, which means fewer jobs and higher prices. It has a long history of pushing for H1B visa increases intended to reduce the average wage of skilled tech workers. Why when there are so many people out of work are they STILL pushing H1B visas?
Also, Microsoft is an abnormally profitable company. That comes from somewhere. For every dollar that Microsoft makes in profit, that could have been $0.25 ~~ $0.30 to a normally profitable company. Which means, because of Microsoft's monopoly, we have one business employing fewer people instead of 3 or 4 business of roughly the same size employing 3 or 4 times that number of people.
Microsoft should be broken up by the government as an anti-competitive monopoly.
(provided that is there decision...there's still time for Microsoft to bribe them like they did at ISO for OOXML).
The ECJ is not some dinky little standards body. The ECJ is a immensely powerful court composed of some of the most powerful people in Europe. Its decisions legally bind entire industries and countries. It is more like the SCOTUS than ISO
I am not saying that the members of the ECJ are incorruptible, just that Microsoft, as rich as they are, have nowhere near the means to corrupt them.
Of course, this is not in the court system yet. Right now it is being handled by the European Commission's Directorate General of Competition, which is kind of like the US Attorney's office in the US. This institution exists purely to find and punish anti-competitive behavior. Its members live under a microscope and its deliberations are a matter of public record. They regularly go after massive European corporations openly supported by member State governments.
Some foreign IT company is not going to have the means to corrupt this body, either.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
The fact that this article got marked as flamebait is demonstrative of how disconnected from reality a lot of people on this site are. What happens when Firefox gets to 50% or more of the browser market? Are Opera going to sue them as well for predative price fixing with Microsoft and Apple?
You're making a fool of yourself - if Firefox got 50% of the browser market it would be on its merits - not because it was preinstalled on the 'Firefox/Mozilla Operating System'. The whole point - which you are presumably deliberately missing - is that MS uses its operating system dominance to create browser dominance, which is potentially illegal under competition law.
Once again:
Having a monopoly is *not* illegal;using it to create a monopoly in another area is.
What browsers on the market charge for their product? Only Opera that I am aware of.
They haven't charged end customers for a desktop browser since 2005. Version 8.5 dropped the requirement on the desktop.
Opera do still charge for their Mobile browser - the binary platform-optimised version for mobile phones. But they don't charge for Opera Mini, which is the J2ME version of their mobile phone browser.
Basically, Opera have been moving away from charging the customer unless there's clearly a market for it. Optimising a browser for a phone is difficult and expensive, and many phone companies have done an awful job of it - hence charging for the mobile version. But that's changing, so the mobile version might either die or go free at some point in the future.
Opera are a business, so they have to make money somehow. I'm afraid that this isn't 2001, and business plans in the "... Profit!" model don't actually work.
Most of Opera's revenue doesn't come from end-users. It comes from licensing and customising their browser product for OEMs. For instance, Nintendo paid them to produce the web browser that they use for their Internet Channel on the Wii...
It sounds like Opera is blaming Microsoft for their lack of marketing and letting people know they have a choice.
Opera is complaining that Microsoft are illegally abusing their monopoly by bundling one product with another. It's the same complain Netscape made in the US, the same complaint that was upheld in the US, and the same complaint that the US failed to meaningfully punish.
In the end I don't really care because I use Linux and none of this (a?)effects me.
I'm posting this from Opera (9.6) on Linux (Ubuntu 8.04), so haven't the foggiest what your point was there...