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.

Comments

what about there boot loader lock in

[Joe_Dragon]

what about there boot loader lock in that is even bigger.

Re:what about there boot loader lock in

[MickyTheIdiot]

No doubt. I wish they would weigh in on the boot loader issue. It makes the I.E. wars seem small potatoes.

Re:what about there boot loader lock in

[jbolden]

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.

Re:what about there boot loader lock in

[kelemvor4]

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.

Re:what about there boot loader lock in

[Anonymous Coward]

That won't happen

The recently deobfuscated https://joindiaspora.com/posts/1799228 Skype binaries show there's a (US?) Government backdoor.

Apparently security agencies were unhappy that encryption and decentralised super nodes made Skype too hard to intercept. The government made funds/incentives available, and Microsoft bought Skype. Microsoft immediately switched Skye away from the peer-to-peer supernodes and over to servers under the control of Microsoft and their government agency sponsors..

Since the VOIP traffic now goes through Microsoft servers, and Microsoft has the encryption keys, they and their partners can monitor all Skype calls and messages.

Opening the protocols/standards would allow for decentralizing again, which they wouldn't accept.

Re:what about there boot loader lock in

[Elldallan]

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.

Re:So they going to fine Apple too?

[characterZer0]

I don't recall Apple being convicted of abusing a monopoly. Or even having a monopoly.

Re:So they going to fine Apple too?

[Drathos]

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.

Re:So they going to fine Apple too?

[Dupple]

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

A little too late Microsoft

[cpu6502]

" '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.

Re:A little too late Microsoft

[cpu6502]

>>>If you fine a company because of a bug in their software this is really not understanding how software development works.

This isn't a bug. This is leaving-out the installation of a distinct piece of software: the browser select program. It would be equivalent to if Microsoft "forgot" to include Windows Media Player for new Win7 PCs. (Which never happens.)

It may have been a mistake due to incompetence, but more likely it was down on purpose. Microsoft is only admitting it now because they were caught, else we'd not hear about it.

Re:So they going to fine Apple too?

[Baloroth]

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.

Re:So they going to fine Apple too?

[Belial6]

Didn't you hear? Windows doesn't run on computers either. It runs on toys. "Real" computers run things like VMS.

Sanction wouldn't be about the bug

[DragonWriter]

If you fine a company because of a bug in their software this is really not understanding how software development works.

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.

Re:When in doubt, go after US companies to look go

[nedlohs]

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=