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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.
what about there boot loader lock in that is even bigger.
I don't recall Apple being convicted of abusing a monopoly. Or even having a monopoly.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
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
And obviously the EU would like things to stay that way. competition is good.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Well, to be honest it's not like Britain has any big computer makers. They haven't figured out how to make a PC that leaks oil yet.
" 'we learned recently that weâ(TM)ve missed serving the BCS software to the roughly 28 million PCs running Windows 7 SP1.' Microsoft says it started distributing the BCS software to Windows 7 SP1 machines on 3 July, a couple of business days after discovering the problem."
If the users have already turned-on their new machines, then they are already PAST the browser choice screen. It is pointless to install it after the fact and Microsoft is in violation of the terms of the lawsuit. Furthermore does anyone really believe it was a "mistake"? Last time I told a cop I made a mistake and thought the green left arrow w/ red stoplight meant "go" instead of stop, he just laughed and gave me a ticket. There's really no room to let Microsoft go, else it sets the precedent that criminals can just say "ooops I made a mistake" and be left free to go.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Sure, go after Apple's iOS boot loader lock first, since they have several times the number of devices as Microsoft that are affected by a lock.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
In most cases bugs in your code is usually bad for your business. But Microsoft has bugs that are peculiar in that, it helps the company. It breaks competitor's products from the DR-DOS days or help it avoid compliance with court rulings... You know at some point people are going to say, "this level of incompetence is simply not possible, it must be intentional". And Microsoft will pull a Ham Burger and argue, "No! We are that incompetent!".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
28 million PCs sold ---
and no one notices or gives a damn about the missing browser ballot.
Not a word.
Not a whisper from Opera.
Google. Mozilla...
Until today, Slashdot, Ars Technica, The Register and all the rest have been as silent as the grave.
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
Didn't you hear? Windows doesn't run on computers either. It runs on toys. "Real" computers run things like VMS.
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.
Any sanctions won't be for "a bug in their software". They will be for:
1) Violating the agreement they made in place of the fine for the past violation, and
2) Filing a false declaration of compliance with the agreement in December 2011.
When you have a legal obligation to do something, and when you declare in an official legal document that you have, in fact, done what you had an obligation to do, well, the fact that you didn't do what you had an obligation to do and hadn't actually verified that you had before you made the legal declaration has consequences.
Opera Mini isn't a real web browser. Opera Mobile is. Good try though.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
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.
... I get a not-very-computer-literate relative asking me "why TF does my new machine keep on and on asking me if I really want to use IE, despite me keeping on telling it yes I do, and please shut up about it?"
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=
Read this and see just how badly behaved Microsoft were. All caps fuckwit.
No, the reason Opera Mini was approved was because it did not violate any app store guidelines. If apple truly wanted to avoid litigation, they would approved Opera Mobile. And Opera did not choose to litigate against Apple for not approving Opera Mobile.
Because that's the penalty Microsoft agreed to in place of a larger fine when they were convicted of illegally leveraging their desktop OS monopoly to constrain browser choice.
Neither Ford, Mercedes, nor BMW has been convicted of illegally leveraging a monopoly in the market for cars (unsurprising, since none of them has anything approaching such a monopoly) to constrain the market for radios and agreed to such notification as part of a negotiated penalty for that conviction, so the situations aren't parallel.
The same reason its not an issue for the auto manufacturers.
The same reason it is not an issue for Apple.