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Microsoft Cancels EU Antitrust Hearing
bahstid writes "The NY Times reports that Microsoft and the European Commission have canceled the only hearing planned in an antitrust investigation into the company's tying of Internet Explorer into Windows because of a dispute over the attendance of European regulators serving as advisers. As a result, the commission will reach its decision and levy a fine based on written statements from Microsoft and its adversaries. Microsoft decided against the opportunity to give oral evidence in the case after it was unable to persuade the commission to move the meeting, scheduled for June 3rd through 5th, so that it did not conflict with a global antitrust conference in Zurich that draws European antitrust regulators."
While I don't always agree with MS's practices, having a competition hearing at a time when the regional experts are unavailable is stupid. They offered to find and pay for a location themselves as the meeting room wasn't available outside of the window, but the EC refused. I think a reasonable request has been turned down for political reasons.
"There were pensioners who invested in Netscape."
MS did lots of bad stuff but I don't blame MS for Netscape's fate.
Netscape sucked. Navigator 3 was better than IE3 and maybe IE4 (and still crappy - rendering a large Slashdot page took ages). Netscape lost more ground from Nav 4 onwards. It took years before Mozilla was usable. Navigator 6 and its followups were bad jokes.
Netscape tried to get money from selling servers. Apache and other FOSS stuff killed them there.
First off, I'm sure that this will get marked as flame bait, because it's easier to rate than to reply. The point isn't really whether IE is too integrated with the OS or not - so what if it is? Personally, I hate IE, *but* a lot of Apple's success is attributable to the tight integration of all its apps with the OS, while *nix distros generally suffer from having too little integration. If MS didn't have such a lion's share of the market, this would not be any more of an issue that it is with Apple. The reason it's an issue is because we've forgotten sportsmanship. If you're losing in a game, you don't (or shouldn't) cry UNFAIR! Instead, you find a way to win. If people think that a crappy browser being too is too integrated into a mediocre OS is unfair, then WRITE AN OS THAT PEOPLE WANT - after all, it's not like the bar is set that high with Windows. It's just too easy to blame failure (in this case, failure to gain a majority market share) on unfair play. Unfortunately, those who spend their time pointing out why they can't win will never do so.
the only thing Ms need a spanking over is it's treatment of OEM's who want to offer alternative OS's, in that respect they try to punish them by removing the bulk discounts OEM's enjoy. the whole bundling arguement is horseshit.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
How is it wrong that they bundle Internet Explorer, or even integrate it entirely into, Windows? Windows is their property, if they wish to integrate functions x y and z into it, even hardcoding them in, what is the problem again?
No it isn't. Microsoft broke the law. It's that simple.
If a car manufacturer breaks antitrust laws and prevents competition in the radio market, sure. But they didn't.
Nonsense. Antitrust laws are turned on all sorts of companies all the time.
So Firefox, Safari and Opera are not better than IE?
Then why didn't Microsoft fail, considering the low quality of many or most of their products? Windows Me? Windows Vista? MS-DOS?
Clever signature text goes here.
Question: How many major EU corps have been hit with these "super fines"? Because I'm starting to smell a "let the stinky Americans pay for our bills!" tax here. MSFT should send out a new "EU Vista" which is just the NT kernel. Hey, Linux is just the kernel, right? I'm sure those guys in the EU could figure out how to bolt enough third party stuff to make it usable.
Frankly the BS is getting thick. And unless someone can produce a list where they have also hit EU corps with big fines I think we should all just call this "Let the Americans pay our bills" tax, which is what it is looking like from here. I don't remember seeing any big EU corps getting any of these giant tax bills....err fines. But I'm sure we'll have some anti MSFT and Intel zealot say that all the EU corps are just big fluffy puppies. But from where I sit it smells like a way to pay for the recession without hurting any of THEIR constituents Hell we should try that, the Japs got money, right? Boy they sure did kill our electronics and car industries. I bet they did some underhanded stuff to do it. We should hit them with a big tax...errr fine. And while we are out and about we should gouge the French too. Hell nobody likes the French.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
My, you're an angry little dweeb aren't you?
I tell you what, how about the crime you're charged with is "driving too fast" or "behaving badly"? How would you like that, skippy? That's what Microsoft has been charged with. A bunch of bureaucrats decided they were going to subjectively interpret some general "laws" and find Microsoft guilty. They then had a kangaroo court to reach this foregone conclusion.
Laws should say things like "thou shalt not do actions X, Y and Z in circumstances ABC". The "law" Microsoft was fined for was basically "don't behave badly when you have a so-called 'monopoly'".
Why would Microsoft attend a kangaroo court with a bunch of bureaucrats when the conclusion is foregone?