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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."
MS requested the opportunity to present oral arguments, the EU scheduled the meeting, MS felt that, although all the required attendees could make it, the date conflicted with another large event, leaving MS without a chance to orally lobby some of those on the sidelines.
MS said that they're not attending, and the EU cancelled it. Basically that means that it's over and that MS is going to lose.
Get your checkbook out, Ballmer!
Put identity in the browser.
When I was younger and lived on Nauru, we used to go climb the mountain. There is a big mountain on Nauru. Well, not so much a mountain as a crater. But the crater is filled with guano, so it's not truly either a crater or a mountain.
Anyway, we used to climb the mountain after school. Once I found a dead body in the brush. When I called my father over, he simply told me to go home. Later that evening, my father called the police and there was a big hullabaloo over the dead body. I remember eating dinner that night after the police had left and I asked my mom why she was crying. She told me that they would have to hold my father in detention until more evidence could be gathered.
My father died in that Nauruan jail cell.
The first is that Microsoft knows that it is so guilty that nothing they say or do at this point will make their penalty smaller.
The second is that Microsoft has simply given up any hope of getting a fair hearing because the EC has already made up its mind.
It's certainly not the first time anyone's skipped work to go to a con.
got this from one of the related links at the bottom of TFA:
According to the person, Microsoft will argue that Internet browsing is inseparable from the Windows operating system. Microsoft will also emphasize that consumers can download and use any competing browser with Windows, and that Internet Explorer's share of the browser market has been falling steadily.
so thats part of their argument? "You see, we're loosing, so that means it's ok for us to cheat!"
here is the article (May 8th)
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Judge: Why didn't you attend your DUI?
Me: Oh, I cancelled it, didn't you get the email?
Judge: I didn't get a chance to check my email this morning, when can you attend another hearing?
Me: I don't have time I'm afraid, it's all explained in the email though
Judge: OK then, drive safe now!
Me: Thanks!
Summation 2
No the OEMs installing Windows would put their own choice of browser on the PC without having Microsoft force their own choice on the user without any giving any means to remove it.
I suppose that'd be interesting to watch then.
You loose your cow in the pasture to let her browse on the grass in a matter that is not detrimental to the pasture's ability to keep growing grass.
It is almost as insane as claiming that foreign companies would have to follow US laws when operating in the USA.
How could we ask for that when even our own companies don't follow them!
So they'll be forced to unbundle IE from Windows in the EU, that only applies to the installation DVD, OEMs will still have to install A browser on the PC before the customer buys a license to use it. What's the betting we'll see an army of Microsoft reps at the OEMs making them "offers they can't refuse" to ensure IE is their "independent choice". Nudge nudge, wink wink ;) Just keep the deal under you hat and keep marking "...... recommends Windows" on all your marketing stuff.
The no-browser, but a download button would at least draw more attention to the fact that there is such a thing as a web browser. That could be a small but significant change.
But, yeah, the best answer would be to require them to bundle several popular browsers: Safari, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and maybe some of the less-well-known. I'm pretty sure they could come to reasonable agreements with the several companies on the bundling.
OEMs would be free to bundle what they want, and MS required to refrain from telling the OEMs which. My guess is that most OEMs would just bundle all the popular ones.
What I'd like to see, however, is the bundling of some special-purpose browsers, as well, browsers with limited functionality so that they would be safe to access bank accounts with. (And Microsoft restrained from producing such browsers.)
Several have mentioned a third possibility, that Microsoft is just not used to being unable to throw its weight around and get its captive audience for expounding on its special right to innovate that ordinary people like me can't have, and has gone home to pout.
So to speak.
I can think of a few other possibilities, such as planning to sue the EU for not allowing them their "day" in court.
If your analogy is not a fiction, my condolences about your father.
I have to wonder, is that crater where they mined the phosphate?
There is a problem with your logic.
No one ever said Microsoft had a monopoly on all PCs. In fact, Apple has quite a sizable share of the PC market. Rather, MS has a monopoly on all Windows PCs. And with this monopoly, they were making deals that were hurting the consumer who had no choice but to buy Microsoft Windows when they bought their Windows PC.
When the user needs a PC, they aren't only looking for the Windows PC with the features they want. If this were the case, there would be many viable operating systems. No, they are looking for a PC with the features they need, and that typically means a Windows PC, and that in turn means Microsoft Windows.
So it doesn't matter that you come up with the best OS ever. If you are competing against Microsoft in the Windows PC market space, you are taking on the entrenched monopoly and will lose.
But if they remove IE from Windows, how am I supposed to download Firefox?
The safest way to access your bank account is to use a Linux live CD rather than any version of a malware-prone installation of Windows.
Finding of facts III.35:
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
Microsoft possesses a dominant, persistent, and increasing share of the world- wide market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems. Every year for the last decade, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems has stood above ninety percent. For the last couple of years the figure has been at least ninety-five percent, and analysts project that the share will climb even higher over the next few years. Even if Apple's Mac OS were included in the relevant market, Microsoft's share would still stand well above eighty percent.
So the relevant market is Intel-compatible PC operating systems, not including valid alternative operating systems.
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?
They would want to do that, no doubt. And do you know what would happen then? EU would investigate it and sue. EU has lately been taking very strict line with companies that abuse their monopoly positions and even stricter with companies that try to wiggle away from their punishments. I have no reason to assume it would change.
OEMs in EU area will soon get a chance to choose what browser shall they distribute the computers with! Most will still distribute IE, no doubt. It is easiest for them and nobody chooses what computer to buy based on what browser it has. So little will really change on that area, I think. But at least the competition will be more fair.
I find it humorous how a company can claim that internet browser should be something that the OS takes care of while they recommend their users to buy antivirus software because keeping the computer safe doesn't belong to the OS.
Probably not. That's the nature of competition law. Dominant players don't play by the same rules as everyone else. Microsoft ignored that, abused their position to undermine competition, and thus broke the law.
If the other guy is cheating at a game and winning (breaking the law), why shouldn't there be any consequences for the cheater?
So to compete in the browser market, all browser vendors should be required to create their own OS?
Breaking the law is not "unfair play"?
Clever signature text goes here.
Unless your bank uses an ActiveX plugin like all Korean banks are required to.
I guess the Live CD might still be the safest way, but only in the "the safest computer is the one with the network cable unplugged" sense.
Put identity in the browser.
The thing is there's nothing to stop OEMs installing other browsers
Actually, that's probably not true. The MS/OEM contract does allow the OEM some leeway in controlling the user experience, but it's probably true that the contract does not allow the OEM to install certain types of software which could be seen as a competitive threat (or "confusing for the user" as MS likes to say) to the standard Windows components.
You're right, people don't choose a PC by which browser is installed, nor do they choose by which OS is installed; despite Microsoft's insistent claims that Windows is the "preferred choice" of consumers.
As is acknowledged towards the end of the quote, The first sentence is only true if almost all non-Microsoft products are ignored.
And when did Intel-compatible become an issue? MS holds a far higher share of the AMD-compatible OS market than the Intel-compatible OS market, because Apple don't make an AMD-compatible OS!
Consider the following:
Only true if we ignore all other vehicles, but so what?
We can take the car analogy further by considering radios.
OMG!!! Citroen bundles a non-standard radio with their vehicle! We must sue them into oblivion and force them to unbundle their radio and sell cars without radios, or with a selection of several.
Caesar's Grunt
Bespoke website design at affordable prices!
Damn /. needs a 5 minute "edit" button on posts, either that or I need to pause for a few minutes before submitting.
Microsoft are unrepentant in their behavior. They see the only wrong being committed is that some bureaucrats are refusing to roll over and be shafted like all the rest and actually trying to hold them to account. They will do everything in their power to buy / delay / soften decisions while they continue to do what they have always done. Any block put into place will be side stepped by Microsoft.
As far as the EU catching up with them is concerned; if Microsoft really thought that was likely they'd think twice. They know there are a LOT of abuses Microsoft have done and continue to do have gone unpunished. There are only so many hours in a day to investigate one repeat unrepentant offender.
I'm glad they lost this one, I hope the fine is HUGE. I hope the Intel fine opens fire on Microsoft for their part in it and are punished accordingly.
You're right on the anti-virus thing too. The more flaws Windows has when it's released, the more business opportunities for third parties to profit by plugging the holes, which in turn allows Microsoft more leeway in claiming it's someone else's fault when it goes wrong. Great for businesses, shit for the end user who has to suffer the results, or pay out at every turn.
Not unlike the Bush era "scare the public, they will sign away their rights for you to protect them from invisible enemies". With the Windows ecosphere it's "scare them about malware, viruses, trojans etc then glue a pump to their wallets and suck them dry for patches, fixes etc". Just when you think you're patched for all the latest malware, along comes a new one. It's more profitable than making a solid, secure OS to begin with.
"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"
When you reduce that "PEOPLE" to all people who matter (namely, the folks at Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba that more or less decide for the whole market) you will realize that an OS that doesn't suck isn't high in the priorities list.
It's like Project Mojave: it was not designed to make end-users reconsider Vista and it didn't even care if that would irk end-users - it was designed to reassure OEMs that computers built to Vista's specs would provoke a favorable response in end users.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Yes. Sort of like how Toyota has a monopoly on all Camrys.
Bundling a browser with an OS isn't illegal. It's illegall to use bundling with a dominant product (Windows) to destroy the competition in a different market (browsers). Apple and Linux definitely do not have the dominance in the market to do that, so they are free to bundle. Besides, Safari is actually a standards compliant browser.
Clever signature text goes here.
Anti-Americanism? Most of the "anti-whatever" comments I see here are Americans whining that the EU is enforcing its own laws, claiming that the EU is just "jealous of successful American companies" and similar nonsense.
Clever signature text goes here.
Microsoft has the dominant position in the OS market, hence the antitrust laws apply to it a lot more than to Linux, Apple, etc.
$ make available
Kind of. Please see my other post for more details about this.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1242889&cid=28065391
No one ever said Microsoft had a monopoly on all PCs.
In previous court cases MS was ruled to have monopoly influence on the "desktop operating system" market.
In fact, Apple has quite a sizable share of the PC market.
The PC market is not monopolized. There is Dell and HP and Lenovo and Apple and a hundred others. Unlike the US case, the EU market definition potentially includes OS X in the relevant market. This doesn't matter for two reasons. First, Apple doesn't have a big enough chunk for Microsoft to lose monopoly influence (by a very large margin). Second, Apple does not sell OS X into the relevant market, refusing to license it to consumers (consumers in this case being mostly OEMs like Dell and large corporations buying site licenses).
When the user needs a PC, they aren't only looking for the Windows PC with the features they want.
This is true, but not really relevant to this case. This case is about MS having tons of power because OEMs have no viable choices other than Windows when buying an OS to preinstall. It's about them using that power to push other products from separate, preexisting markets thereby undermining free trade in those markets.
So it doesn't matter that you come up with the best OS ever. If you are competing against Microsoft in the Windows PC market space, you are taking on the entrenched monopoly and will lose.
Will, Microsoft doesn't actually make a PC so it is hard to take them on at all. It is nearly impossible to win in the desktop OS space. In numerous other markets like Web browsers, it is very hard to compete because MS illegally uses their Windows monopoly in ways that make it so that even if your browser is far superior to Internet Explorer (and really what browser isn't), you're unlikely to achieve the same level of market share. That's the illegal thing here and what is detrimental to the industry and market.
What's the betting we'll see an army of Microsoft reps at the OEMs making them "offers they can't refuse" to ensure IE is their "independent choice". Nudge nudge, wink wink ;) Just keep the deal under you hat and keep marking "...... recommends Windows" on all your marketing stuff.
Well, if MS does that, it may be wallet time again for Ballmer.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Actually Microsoft's attitude towards IE has been rather commendable lately, what with the improved standards-compliance of IE8 and the fact that it can be easily uninstalled from a Windows 7 installation, leaving no trace of it behind. Not to mention the number of browsers has improved over the past couple of years on the Windows platform, and how Microsoft is opening up to ODF support in Office and the like. It's getting to a point where the legitimacy of senseless Microsoft-bashing is at an all-time low.
well.. the last time I checked I could install firefox from my Ubuntu desktop without causing the OS or desktop to become non-functional.
If you are using XP then you can never totally stop using I.E. Every program that uses any browser functionality or gathers any information from the internet uses I.E. code. There is no way to change that. Not to mention that items like update manager require IE and have no way to run in other browsers. I can't speak to Vista on this (though I know that Update Manager runs somewhat different).
I think to anyone with enough information KNOWS that the OS/IE thing is illegal.. I think the problem is that our legal system is so screwed up and is so tied up in details its hard to define. But in this case it's a little like porn... it's hard to define buy you know it when you see it.
No OEM would ship an OS without a browser so that argument is worthless. But I'm all for allowing MS to ship Windows with IE as long as I can completely remove it like I can do with pretty much any other program in Windows or any program in Linux.
You can argue that the ability to play movies and audio is just as important these days so why no let MS tie WMP into the OS or tie in Outlook express, MS Messenger and even go one step further and combine it with Office and tie it completely into the OS? People want and need the functionality in those programs.
MS would probably do that if they could get away with it but they know they can't. They do know that internet is the most important aspect of computing these days and that it could reach the point where the browser effectively becomes the OS.
That's why they choose to lock in IE and will fight tooth and nail to stop people from having the right to uninstall it.
BS. Abuse of monopoly is their business model.
you had me at #!
Sorry BadAnalogyGuy but you're a bit confused on this one. You're citing the US DoJ findings, but this is an EU case. They did not include "Intel-compatible" in their rulings of fact and while they did use the term "PC Operating System" they used PC as an adjective to distinguish it from the "Work Group Server Operating System" market. Macs are a brand of PC according to the EU case.
So the relevant market is Intel-compatible PC operating systems, not including valid alternative operating systems.
You're mistaken. That was the US, this is an EU case.
Really?
Intel-compatible in this context means anything x86 compatible. Just in case you don't know, that also includes AMD
Also do note that the quote you disparage is a legal finding of fact, and was confirmed by a federal appeals court. That would be a big clue that you haven't correctly understood the quote.
Incidentally, the corresponding conclusion of law ordered Microsoft to be broken up as an illegal monopoly. Would that that had happened. Instead, Microsoft went to work...the resulting settlement was an almost pathetic slap on the wrist.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Microsoft are spinning this. They say that nobody senior was available, that is nonsense. The EU were sending Neelie Kroes, who is European Commissioner for Competition and about as senior as could possibly be. Microsoft got scared and ran away doing damage limitation PR on the way out.
As is acknowledged towards the end of the quote, The first sentence is only true if almost all non-Microsoft products are ignored. And when did Intel-compatible become an issue?
Intel compatible was only an issue in the US because the regulators there were wonky. It is not an issue in this case at all.
MS holds a far higher share of the AMD-compatible OS market than the Intel-compatible OS market, because Apple don't make an AMD-compatible OS!
Intel, AMD, ARM, it doesn't matter for the EU. Apple's OS X is considered in the EU, but not significant because Apple doesn't license their OS to the relevant consumers. Since Dell can't license OS X to put on their machines, Apple making it does little to lessen MS's power to force IE upon Dell machines.
I dunno, there are more options than payment to persuade someone to do your bidding. A promise to increase the per seat cost price of Windows if you refuse, making you more expensive than those who do agree is one. People who are well practiced at avoiding the law have got systems in place to exploit any block placed on them, and lawyers / lobbyists / PR stooges to help them evade justice while it's business as usual.
The thing that people tend to forget is that Microsoft have a system to essentially print money. They develop (or at least invest in) a product to bring it to market. At that point the development costs are over. The product costs peanuts to duplicate and distribute, it's even cheaper for OEMs since they use the same CD over and over, as well as no printing of a manual etc.
The customer is buying a generated number. The more unlocked features, the bigger the version, the more expensive the generated number is. After the costs of development are paid back EVERY penny made by selling numbers is profit. When they deny XP to consumers who want that instead of Vista, the idea of it being "out of stock" is a joke, just generate another number and take the money. This is NOT a physical product which has costs of parts / labor etc in every copy.
Yes, there are ongoing support costs, costs to develop new products, updates etc but your initial investment is paid. Even developing new features may not apply to the current version if there is enough evidence that it could be held back and used as a carrot to persuade people to buy the next version which includes it.
The EC case is based on the fact that Microsoft is considered a monopoly. That monopoly status was never tried in EU, and was referenced by the EC, so in effect, the US DoJ finding is part of the EC case.
He was using a bad analogy.
Yeah, because an "extra" browser that is standardized and all Windows apps can depend on for basic rendering functionality is CRAZY! What a massive heartache!
I'm saying, sarcastically, that your argument is stupid. IE was on Windows long ago to provide a baseline HTML rendering engine and browser for users of Windows OS's. Windows applications now depend on that browser being present to function. Microsoft can (and has) allow you to remove the IE browser icon, but the browser is part of the OS for a sound technical reason.
You're lying. This is not true. An OEM can install anything they want.
That's because the finding of fact is wrong. It amuses me you nerds will question all sorts of crazy judicial findings but when it comes to Microsoft a laughable declaration that MS is a monopoly in the face of, well, "fact", is taken as coming from on high.
At the time in question, when MS first started bundling IE, an OEM could not. Microsoft forced OEMs to sign contracts that said they wouldn't install any competitive products.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
That's unfortunate for the 50 million people who live in South Korea, however that still makes a Linux Live CD the ideal option for the majority of internet users whose banks aren't forced to use a government-mandated piece of software and/or have the sense not to tie an important part of their business to just the one piece of outdated software.
No IE was on Windows long ago to prevent any threat that Netscape Navigator presented to their monopoly. They were subsequently found guilty of illegal monopoly maintenance due to this in the US courts.
Not trying to argue with you. I recommend a live CD to all my friends. I just wanted to point out that some people don't have much choice.
Put identity in the browser.
The EC case is based on the fact that Microsoft is considered a monopoly. That monopoly status was never tried in EU
Sorry it took so long for me to respond to this, I've been on a several day bender. Anyway, the EU did determine Microsoft to have a monopoly in their previous case against them. They did not rely on the US courts and I'm not certain that would even be legal. In fact they defined the market on which MS had a monopoly differently than the DoJ.