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Russia Launches Anti-trust Probe of Microsoft
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Russia's state anti-monopoly service said on Thursday it had launched a probe of Microsoft over cutbacks in supplies of its Windows XP operating system in Russia.
The agency said it thought Microsoft had violated antimonopoly legislation by cutting delivery of Windows XP operating system to Russia both separately and pre-installed on personal computers, as well as in its pricing policy on the product.
It said it would consider the case on July 24, 2009."
After so many other countries are getting on the whole anti-monopoly bandwagon, why should Russia be left out of the money?
While Microsoft obviously engages in a lot of monopolistic practices and I strongly dislike them for this, Russia's reasoning seems rather flawed.
While yes, it sucks that Windows XP is being EOLed for a lot of people because Vista is worse than XP for many users (IMO anyone with less RAM than the 32-bit addressing limit because if there's anything modern that sucks more than Vista, it's 64-bit XP), products getting EOLed is a fact of life. I can't see any reason why EOLing a product would be monopolistic.
Hell, if anything, it would be just the opposite - EOLing a popular product in favor of a less popular product is going to drive people towards the competition.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I always thought bundling useful tools with an operating system(i.e. IE) was a poor example of leveraging a monopoly to corner a market. However, discontinuing support for old products to FORCE new ones on customers, that is leveraging a monopoly in an anti-competitive manner. This is a much more reasonable case to take against Microsoft's more shady practices.
So in Russia it's illegal for a company to sell a 10 year old product, even though that product will be 2 versions old this year? If we could make legal demands to sell retired products I'd still be eating Ninja Turtle cereal today.
Hey, with vast majority of EU fines being levied on European companies, can you really blame them for thinking that ALL companies operating in EU, not only local ones, should follow rules?
One that hath name thou can not otter
XP is a 9 year old OS. Even auto makers are only required to support the parts for their cars for 7 years
In the US and Europe, automobiles are heavily regulated to meet certain standards, and software is not. If a 9 year old car is many times safer, more reliable, more fuel efficient, much better looking, and more easily fixed than the 2 year old car coming from the factory now, and the new car is just a total dog, and if community outrage was so high that people would only want to buy the old car, and this was the only auto maker available to buy cars from then damn straight the community would be in the moral right to demand that company continue to support the old car model until the choice of a car that was as good or better came along.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist both in the US and Europe. If there was more competition, and Vista was a dog, people could turn to another company for better service. But they can't. They turn back to Microsoft and demand XP. They are, allegedly, trying to control the supply channel by strangling supplies of XP and hoping this will force demand to Vista, which will make Vista look better as sales go up. They have an image problem with Vista and they are using their monopoly power to try to fix it. If this was a competitive market and Linus and Mac OS had 33% each, We could just switch to one of them and Microsoft would have to compete.
Once you are a monopoly, 99% of the business book is thrown out the window. Everything comes down to, "when you take an action as a monopolistic company, are you abusing your market dominance and reducing choice for the consumer?" A car maker to tried to do this without monopolistic power would shoot themselves in the foot for cancelling a profitable product line just because they want to sell more of another. The American automakers did just this, by trying to sell more trucks and SUVs when the future trend was towards smaller fuel efficient cars. Now GM and Chrysler are on life support, and Hyundai is making out like a bandit. Competition would have done that to Microsoft to, but there is none, so they have to follow different rules. If they don't follow those rules, any and all governments need to slap their greedy hands.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You make a really good point.
It's quite easy for a third party to manufacture compatible parts for an automobile. There's a huge and thriving industry based on exactly that premise.
Not so for proprietary software. Many vendors go to significant lengths, both legally and technically, to prevent this. Microsoft is a good example.
So when Microsoft says "we will no longer support this product" it's not like there is someone else who can take over that support. It's abuse of a monopoly position that has been deliberately engineered. Not cool.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Amazing how people's attitude towards Free software changes once they learn the true cost of opening pictures with Photoshop and typing memos with MS Office. I do wish people came to Linux voluntarily but after 20 years of unrestrained piracy only threat of heavy fines can make people give up what they have come to believe is rightfully theirs.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Yes, like 64bit OS will stop people from opening that attachment or downloading Antivirus2015 and running it.
Also, people will code 32bit apps, because they are more compatible (runs on both 32bit ant 64bit systems), while 64bits is only useful if your app uses a lot of RAM or CPU. There is no point for a 64bit CD/DVD recording software, media player and browser. 64bits can be useful for games, photoshop and video editing software.
If I understand correctly, to make a 32bit app from 64bit (or vice versa) you need to recomplie it, it's not like you need to rewrite it.
No one forces you to stop using 1960s muscle cars. If you owned one, you can continue to own it forever. You can also legally maintain and service it, and it is compatible with still-available fuels.
Taking away XP is a little different. Whole countries rely on Windows to function. If you pulled the Windows rug out from under Russia (or anyone else) it'd be a train wreck. Without major (MAJOR) hardware upgrades, Vista isn't an option for your average East European lesser-government-agency-office. And refusing to license, support, or open-source (thus allowing self-support) XP when there is no easy alternative is essentially leaving Vista as the only option.
If you were a national government, and you were being told "Pay billions in licensing and hardware upgrades for no reason OR ELSE" by a monopoly company, you'd be reaching for the anti-trust box too.
Usability of XP is a lot more than just having it.
For one, security. Security threats march forever onward, and are kept at bay in the long run by MS patching up the various breaches. When they stop doing that, XP stops being useful to anyone who desires a secure computing environment (eg, national governments).
For two, new licences. Large organisations are forever gradually replacing hardware, reformatting old hardware, and generally altering their computing setup gradually over time. If MS will no longer license you to install their OS, you'll be forced to replace it with something else (see GP).
For three, compatibility. If MS is pushing an OS that has fundamental difference in the way it interacts with hardware, drivers and the like will be different. The more pressure MS puts on obsoleting XP, the less likely it is to be compatible with new hardware, software and APIs.
None of this applies to your car. The only thing your car needs to interact with is fuel (still available 40 years on) and spares (still, you guessed it, available 40 years on). A well maintained 1960s car is exactly as useful now as it was when it was made, capable of all of the exact same things. The same can't be said of an obsoleted OS.