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."

Comments

Anti-monopoly?

[Andy Dodd]

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.

Re:Anti-monopoly?

[wjh31]

because you can only afford to EOL a still very popular product when you are near-monopolistic enough to be able to force people to buy the more expensive alternative.

This actually sounds reasonable.

[i kan reed]

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.

Re:This actually sounds reasonable.

[compro01]

I don't see anyone wanting to require Microsoft to keep supporting it (They're going to support it with security updates until 2014 anyways). I see people wanting Microsoft to be required to keep selling it.

Re:This actually sounds reasonable.

[sunderland56]

Auto makers are required to support their cars for 7 years after the last new one is sold, not from the date of introduction.

XP was available until 2008 (if I remember correctly), which would mean that if it was a car, it would have to be supported until 2015.

Re:This actually sounds reasonable.

[sweatyboatman]

1. software is very different from car parts. a better metaphor would be Coke and New Coke.

XP may be a 9 year old OS, but to many people it's a better OS than Vista. Vista is New Coke. The Coca-Cola company tried to insist on selling New Coke exclusively, but they alienated their existing customers. They went back to the original formula because New Coke was driving away customers to Pepsi and other competitors.

If Coke was the only kind of soda, then we'd all be drinking New Coke today. Regardless of whether it was wanted by customers.

That's what Microsoft did with Vista. Except there's no "Pepsi" competitor to force them to market their more desirable product.

To answer your question, Microsoft can "get rid" of their aging product when they produce a new product that people want more than XP.

Re:This actually sounds reasonable.

[Tweenk]

Even auto makers are only required to support the parts for their cars for 7 years.

If more than 60% of people had the same 9 year old model, they'd have to. Even if they didn't, somebody else would because it would be profitable to sell parts. When it comes to Windows, only Microsoft has the source code and can supply fixes, so it makes sense to force them to support their product, because lots of people are still using it and nobody else can do it.

gimmie back my gramophone!

[spyrochaete]

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.

Re:gimmie back my gramophone!

[sweatyboatman]

two versions old? that's a metric? Vista's lifespan was what, a year and a half?

XP is a good enough operating system. In my (admittedly limited) understanding, demand for XP is actually quite a bit higher than for Vista. (Though this seems to be borne out by things like people paying $100 more for a Vista license so they can downgrade to XP.)

Replacing a very popular product with a much less popular product is corporate suicide (imagine if Toyota discontinued the Corolla line and replaced it with a Hummer line -- Honda would be very pleased). The only way a company could get away with this is if they are in a monopoly position. And it's reasonable to consider that an abuse of that monopoly power to do so.

After all, Microsoft's monopoly does not give them the right to foist garbage upon their users year after year.

My office has XP machines, I know they work with all my software and I the people here are comfortable with that OS. If "Windows 7" (like Vista) doesn't offer sufficient enhancements over XP, why should I be forced to purchase an inferior (for me) product in order to get a new computer?

Re:gimmie back my gramophone!

[je ne sais quoi]

Nobody relied on solely Ninja Turtle cereal to obtain their living. One could argue that XP is a vital component for a lot of businesses and that by artificially restricting it as MS is doing, you are forcing them to incur an unnecessary cost. This is essentially saying that MS is a utility service and their actions are analogous to the phone company forcing all land line users to purchase new land lines just because they are old (and not necessarily in need of replacement). I don't necessarily view this as correct, but MS doesn't have too much sympathy from me because they're ditching an OS that people want to buy and somewhat arbitrarily forcing people to buy a new one that isn't as fast.

Re:Waiting for bribes

[sznupi]

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?

Bad analogy

[hellfire]

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.

Re:Russia is cracking down on piracy, Linux spread

[Reservoir Penguin]

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.