Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft, EU Reach Antitrust Accord
alphadogg writes "Microsoft appears to have reached an agreement with the European Commission that concludes an antitrust battle that has lasted a decade, Europe's top competition regulator said today. A proposal the company offered in July to address charges of monopoly abuse were dismissed as insufficient by the Commission, as well as by rivals in the software industry. But the latest iteration appears to have mollified the EC's regulator. 'We believe this is an answer,' said competition commissioner Neelie Kroes in a press conference. 'I think this is a trustful deal we are making. There can't be a misunderstanding because it is the final result of a long discussion between Steve Ballmer and me.' The new settlement offer addresses charges that Microsoft distorted competition in its favor in the market for web browsers, by giving its Internet Explorer browser an unfair advantage over rivals."
The Register points out this interesting quote from the materials Microsoft released on the subject: "Microsoft shall ensure that third-party software products can interoperate with Microsoft's Relevant Software Products using the same Interoperability Information on an equal footing as other Microsoft Software Products."
If this actually happens, it will be a Very Good Thing for the world in general, as Microsoft will no longer be legally able to keep changing their protocols to break access by non-Microsoft software.
Given their track record, though, I don't believe for a minute that Microsoft will actually make all the information available in a clear and usable format. More likely they'll release some information that looks nice, to show what good boys they're being, then release some more information terribly scrambled, and keep most of the information to themselves, because by that point the EU will be paying less attention to them and they'll have to take them back to court to get them to do anything more.
Same old story.
And yes, I am a terminal cynic. Why do you ask? ;-)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I don't know what's worse - the possibility that he could be so naive, or the probability that this is a backroom deal, and we are never going to know the whole story.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
'This proposed measure ensures that PC manufacturers will continue to be able to install any browser on top of Windows and make any browser the default. It also ensures that PC manufacturers and users will be able to turn Internet Explorer on and off '
And with 'search' going to be directly embedded into the applications, the 'choice' of browser is going to become moot.
"This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine [...] We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again." --Neville Chamberlain, September 1938.
Go somewhere random
This only affects the browser market where Microsoft is steadily losing ground anyway. The fact of the matter is that the operating system itself is still untouched and Microsoft still has no penalty for pulling more and more functionality into the OS itself.
The problem has never been just browsers or messaging utilities or office suites or default home pages. It is about how Microsoft uses its monopoly power on the desktop to stifle competitors. This could have been handled years ago except the American judge couldn't stay awake long enough to do anything but parrot the prosecuting attorney's notes.
MS should have been broken into an OS company and an apps company long ago. But it didn't happen, and we're all still the worse off for it. Trying to change anything by half-assed measures like forcing the user to choose a browser is just not going to work.
Both of your links are reprints of the first linked article in the summary.... Neither better nor worse as they are the same....
Microsoft's ActiveSync is already on 50 million and growing Apple devices, the Palm Pre and Google has licensed it for it's online sync service. IE is old news and MS doesn't seem to care about it anymore. Now MS owns the technology that transfers documents and email over the internet between devices.
I was told repeatedly, on slashdot and elsewhere, that offering a choice could never work. The script was to complicated, among other things. You can't download anything until the browser is installed, among other things. That Microsoft couldn't offer browsers which they didn't own, among other things.
After all those highly intelligent individuals convinced me that this browser ballot was impossible, I KNOW it has to be fake! Those screenshots are photoshopped, it's all a figment of some demented Euro's imagination!!
NURSE!! I need another pill, please!
Ahh, to hell with the pill. Screw all the astroturfers who spent all their time with wasted arguements.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Actually, no. They became the dominant OS because IBM used MS' OS for its PC and XT. In business, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" so IBM's PCs became dominant. By the time Compaq cloned an IBM, DOS was the standard office OS, and hardware manufacturers used MS's OS because then their machine would be "IBM compatible".
People used MS' OSes at home because 1) that's what they had a work and 2) that's what came pre-installed on their computer.
If the CP/M guy hadn't missed that meeting, and Billl Gates' parents weren't both lawyers who worked for Microsoft, chances are your PC wouldn't be running Windows now. Microsoft owes everything to IBM.
Free Martian Whores!
Was there something in the OEM licenses that prevented PC vendors from installing 3rd-party browsers? The "settlement" spends a lot of time talking about the ballot screen for selecting browsers. But I'm not sure why another vendor could not have made their own ballot screen if they wanted. Or just install whatever browser they like.
In the past there were but that is no longer necessary. The EU did poll OEMs and ask if they were being pressured by MS before they implemented this solution. Do OEMs feel they will be discriminated against in bulk licensing if they make a different browser the default or offer their own ballot? The results of this poll were not made public, but we can infer the response based upon the EU's solution. However, even if MS does nothing at this point market forces resulting from their previous abuses will push OEMs to install IE as the default browser. This is because MS's intentional breaking of standards ala the famous "embrace, extent, extinguish" memos have resulted in a significant number of Web pages that only function properly in IE. Further, previous findings of fact in other jurisdictions have concluded this was intentional and not an accidental result of MS's actions. As a result, the state of the Web itself motivates OEMs to make IE the default and that state is the result of previous crimes.
The EU chose to make the ballot the default to minimize MS's ability to retaliate against OEMs. Until Web standards become the norm, however, any remedy from the EU will be only partially effective in restoring real competition and allowing that competition to drive innovation as it would in a capitalist, competitive free market.