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Microsoft's Price Fixing Penalty, 9M Euros
freakxx writes "Microsoft has been slapped with a fine of 9 million Euros by German regulators over illegally fixing the price of its Office-suite in an anti-competitive manner during a retail-promotion fair. Microsoft has accepted the fine and decided not to take this issue to any higher level."
The question that needs to be asked is will this fine act as a deterrent and convince Microsoft (and onlookers) that swindling their customers is bad for business.
I would say no. They will continue to find ways to get one over on the customer and on the whole they will make more money by doing so. It's nice to see them lose a battle but they are clearly winning the war.
Finding a sleazier way to do things is what passes for innovation at Microsoft and this will hardly stop them.
Or perhaps the EC is just retarded, as they have shown themselves to be.