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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
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
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.
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.