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EU Investigating Microsoft Over IE Bundling Again
vu1986 writes, quoting GigaOm: "Microsoft has confessed to violating its browser choice agreement with European antitrust regulators, after they opened up a fresh investigation into the company's behavior. This is a big deal, not least because it means the company could now face a fine of up to 10 percent of its annual turnover — $7 billion at last count."
Microsoft agreed in 2009 to inform users they could install other browsers. They did, mostly, but Windows 7SP1 users didn't get the software update. Microsoft is claiming it was just a software bug, and have taken actions to fix it.
No doubt. I wish they would weigh in on the boot loader issue. It makes the I.E. wars seem small potatoes.
There's a bit of a difference. MS was convicted of using their OS monopoly to harm existing competitors in the web browser space. Because of the closed nature of the entire iOS environment, there has never been a competing browser to Safari in iOS.
One could argue that there is an abuse of position by Apple, but unless/until the courts decide there is, nothing will be done.
End of line..
It's not the same set of circumstances.
Apple isn't a monopoly and it has not abused a monopoly position, no where near the same market share as microsoft
The choice people have now regarding browsers could be argued is a result of this litigation by the EU. A good over view is here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case
More specifically here
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/15&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
and here
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/04/382&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
I'm probably gonna get modded Troll or something
Watch those corners
Well..... why do you think Apple approved Opera Mini for use on their iOS devices? I'm sure they were very aware that it was Opera who sued Microsoft (and won), and if Apple turned them down then Opera would sue Apple next for abuse of their dominant cellphone position.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Then you obviously need to learn how to use Google. Or Wikipedia. Or not, since I just gave you the link. If you are to lazy to click on that: they got fined €860 million for anti-competitive practices, plus had a lot of compliance stuff they also had to do.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This is the way MSFT used to operate in order to beat down their competition. "Updates" to their OS that "accidentally" broke their competitors' software.
The issue isn't bundling a browser with a computer.
The issue is leveraging dominant market power in the desktop OS market in the EU in an anticompetitive way in the existing-and-distinct desktop browser market. Something Apple can't do with desktop Safari, since it doesn't have dominant market power in the desktop OS market.
iOS isn't even the #1 mobile OS in the EU, much less as dominant in that space as Windows is in the desktop OS market. Market power in the market that is being leveraged is a key factor here.
Antitrust actions are largely about misusing dominant market power. What market power you have in the market you are leveraging is a key factor. Microsoft Windows is quite dominant in the desktop OS market in the EU. Apple iOS isn't even #1, much less dominant, in the mobile OS market in the EU.
Bundling, as such, isn't the fundametnal issue. Its just the means by which Microsoft was found to have leveraged their dominant position in the desktop OS market.
Because to be convicted of monopoly abuse, you need to have a monopoly first.
MS abused it's monopoly (and monopoly does not need to 100% market share, the term is market dominating position, at least here around) in desktop OSes to force IE on users => e.g. it punished OEMs that preinstalled anything not approved by MS. => they basically managed to get that many normal users associated the IE logo as "the Internet", ... => on a standard Win box you need usually IE at least once to fetch an alternative browser, ...
In the browser case where MS was fined, one of parts of the settlements was that MS agreed to offer a selection screen where users can select during the PCs setup what browser they want to use, first to educate users that there are alternatives, and second to help diversity in the browser market.
MS in Win7SP1 just managed to forget that selection screen. It was just a mistake. Well if you are on probation, which MS is, you should really make sure that you follow the imposed sanctions, or you need to pay for your mistakes.
So if it was just a mistake, than obviously MS has not communicated strongly enough to their employees that their are a convicted company on probation, management error by MS, so accept responsibility, pay a 2-3 digit million euro fine, and everything is fine, that should make you remember not to forget the browser selection screen on your next release, ...
That wouldn't be because you are using mostly US news sources would it? Which you would expect to focus on things involving the US and US companies.
Like the 900 million euro fine for Saint Gobain, the 300 million euro fine for Air France, and so on. You can count the number of US versus the number of european companies that have had actions taken against them by digging through http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm?fuseaction=dsp_result&policy_area_id=1&case_title=
They are concerned that people installing will get freaked out by the various warning about turning off security features. It isn't very expensive, so they are just paying rather than have a problem.
what about there boot loader lock in that is even bigger.
Are you talking about UEFI secure boot? That's not a "microsoft" thing, that's a UEFI thing. Just to be clear, it was jointly developed by AMD, American Megatrends Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Insyde, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Phoenix Technologies. All this whining about an optional security feature sounds like a lot of whining about nothing to me. If you want to load linux on a machine that shipped with windows (and therefore UEFI Secure boot enabled) you just turn off UEFI secure boot. It would be trivial for anyone capable of installing linux in the first place. If a vendor wants to sell pc's with linux preloaded, they can ship the pc with secure boot disabled. If an OS distributor wants to get their OS properly signed so they can use secure boot, they can do that too.
Get over this non-issue.
If you're talking about the lock, you're talking about Microsoft ARM devices, not desktop devices. Microsoft has no monopoly there, and is FAR behind Apple in that market.
Under antitrust law, it's illegal to leverage your monopoly in one field (desktop operating systems) to gain market share in another field (tablets and smartphone OSes).
If you want a dual-boot with Windows 8,. you have to go into the BIOS every time to switch the OS. So reboot - go into BIOS - change secure boot - save settings - reboot and boot into another OS. When you want to go back to Windows 8, you have to jump trough all the hoops again.
While it is indeed possible (for now - this is not guaranteed to last in any way) to boot another OS, switching between two OS is a cumbersome procedure. This creates a mental hurdle with the "average" user, that will give up this tiresome hoop-jumping after a few times. Result - a hindrance for the use of an alternative OS and a psychological advance for Windows 8, because people will -wrongly but nevertheless- associate Linux (or another OS than Windows) with difficult and cumbersome.
While UEFI is not developed by Microsoft, this company demands secure boot is enabled to get a certification for Windows 8. Hardware makers want this certification, because making hardware that is not Windows 8 "compatible" just wont sell (rightly or wrongly, but that's what they are facing). So - to keep themselves in business these hardware makers just have to comply to the Microsoft demands. Microsoft has the hardware makers in a iron grip - make no mistake about that.
Now - I said "for now" when I said the desktop hardware is not "locked down" like the ARM based hardware is. It would not surprise me if the next version of windows will get a certification demand that will say secure boot will be the standard, without the demand to make it switchable. It is not difficult to see the slippery-slope that was started with UEFI's secure boot. I predict in the future it will become harder and harder to run anything else than Windows on the hardware you bought. This makes the adoption of Linux or any other OS harder and harder.
Bottom line - Microsoft want to sabotage the adoption of Linux, and with the introduction of a lot of psychological (and physical) hurdles to run anything else than windows they seem to succeed in this goal. This gives Microsoft an unfair advance...
You better read up about the MS requirements for secure boot with a pre-installed Win8...
Indeed, you better read up:
"Mandatory. Enable/Disable Secure Boot. On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv."
What else you think Canonical and RH are doing spending money, time and effort to make their OS'es install in dual boot mode with Win8?
They're trying to save their users the hassle of having to disable Secure Boot, or manually adding their keys, on every Win8 PC they install RedHat or Ubuntu to. In other words, it's a question of convenience, not necessity.
Read this and see just how badly behaved Microsoft were. All caps fuckwit.
And on ARM, Windows has such a small market share, it can't be considered monopolistic (since MS is nowhere near being able to exploit a monopoly position).
Yes it can, MS has a de facto monopoly on the desktop(win 8), they are using that as leverage in another market(by blocking dual boot), I don't know about US antitrust legislation but that is explicitly forbidden according to EU antitrust legislation.