EC To Pursue Antitrust Despite Microsoft's IE Move

snydeq writes "The European Commission will proceed with its antitrust case against Microsoft regardless of Microsoft's decision to strip IE from Windows 7 in Europe. Europe's top antitrust regulator said the EC would draw up a remedy that allows computer users 'genuine consumer choice,' noting that stripping out IE from Windows 'may potentially be positive,' but 'rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less.' Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, whose complaint to the European Commission at the end of 2007 sparked the initial antitrust investigation, said Microsoft is 'trying to set the remedy itself by stripping out IE. ... Now that Microsoft has acknowledged it has been breaking the law by bundling IE into Windows, the Commission must push ahead with an effective remedy,' he said."

Comments

Re:Okay, enough already

[micronicos]

Total nonsense! The EU is doing what the USA should have done a decade ago. If the US regulators hadn't been spineless & in bed with big business.

You Americans talk so big - when someone else shows cohones you can only scream & stamp your little feet.

I'm proud of Europe & the EU here. We'll get Windows bundled with Opera & Firefox yet.

Re:Okay, enough already

[Samalie]

If I was Ballmer, I'd tell the EC to go fuck themselves, and then yank every Microsoft product from the shelves in the EU.

Either Linux will (finally) hit the mainstream, and /. people will be happy, or the populations of the EU will shit their fucking pants and tell the EC to go fuck themselves.

Either way, the people win, and this anti-corporation EU bullshit ends.

And Microsoft sucks, and is evil, and blah blah blah free software rules!

Maybe they're just thinking...

[MrKaos]

Fuck em.

I know it's a bit trolloish bit I'm pissed ans I',m ust saying.

Re:Okay, enough already

[Thomasje]

I suppose the silver lining is that we'll still be able to open any old Explorer window (you know, the file manager thingy, not IE) and just type a URL there. IE is too deeply tied into Windows to really remove it altogether; my guess is that the only change will be the disappearance of the blue "e" icon.

It's still stupid, though. I guess it all started with the Netscape vs. Microsoft lawsuit in the '90s, and IMHO even that lawsuit was stupid. WTF can the legal basis be for forbidding any OS vendor from adding functionality to their products? What's next, <car analogy> Honda can't put their own brand of radio in the new cars they sell because it hurts the sales of Blaupunkt? </car analogy>

Re:Okay, enough already

[ratboy666]

Enough already?

What, exactly, is enough? Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. Convicted of illegally extending the monopoly. Which made them a lot of money.

An argument can be raised that enough would be "reasonable" fine, in line with EU practice and law. We could argue about the amount, but EU fines allow up to 10% of a companies annual global turnover for each year of the behaviour. Microsoft boasts in excess of $50B in annual sales. Given the behaviour lasted a few years, the fine could be well in excess of 10 to 15B dollars.

Given other recent EU activities (vs. Intel), they may reduce the fine to 1%. But, it needs discussion. We are talking BILLIONS here.

Somewhere between 1 and 15 billion is the "truth"; it doesn't sound like simply un-bundling to me...