EU Set To Charge Microsoft Over Ruling Breach

New submitter quippe writes in with some bad news for Microsoft. "Microsoft Corp will be charged for failing to comply with a 2009 ruling ordering it to offer a choice of web browsers, the European Union's antitrust chief said on Thursday, which could mean a hefty fine for the company. U.S.-based Microsoft's more than decade-long battle with the European Commission has already landed it with fines totaling more than a billion euros ($1.28 billion). The Commission, which opened an investigation into the issue in July, is now preparing formal charges against the company, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said."

Comments

They have to ban Windows in EU

[aglider]

If they want to really make any pressure on MS.
If I fail to pay the fines to city police, they seize my car until I pay.
The law should be equal to everyone.

Re:They have to ban Windows in EU

[AliasMarlowe]

Nah, what would make a bigger impact is to revoke Microsoft's copyright in the EU and splash MS software downloads all over the governments websites.

And that might have the "unintended" consequences of hurting sales of Apple's shiny-shitty (not exactly a disaster), hurting adoption of Linux and LibreOffice (sad, but not affecting very many), and slightly boosting the sales of anyone making software for Windows (the biggest tragedy).

Re:They have to ban Windows in EU

[cripkd]

What the FUCK is "desktop" anyway?

I keep hearing people like you saying linux isn't prepared for the desktop and here I am using it for years.
* I do web development at work and I have everyhting I need on Ubuntu. I've used it on desktop and laptops without issues.
* My wife and my kids use it at home (my kids are 6 and don't even know what Windows and Linux is, or care, they just use the browser for flash games). My wife uses it for browsing and for document editing (at a level where google docs would suffice).
* I use it at home for web development, browsing, soemetimes even RAW image editing (for which I admit I boot to a 3 years old XP install I only need for Lightroom/Photoshop)

What does "the desktop" mean ???
Audio editing, CAD, 3d modelling (blender?), video editing?

Aren't those too "niche"? Not beeing able to run Avid or Maya to build the next Avatar movie disqualifies it as usable for the desktop?
In MY opinion that's not "the desktop", sorry. That's a niche you need specified hardware and software anyway.

Note:
I do run into issues sometimes, but SO DO I ON Windows XP!

Otherwise I'm perfectly able to:
plug my DSLR and download images off it,
i can play dvd's,
I can create dvd's,
I can capture DV video of a handycam,
I can quickly edit images in GIMP (crop, resize, a bit of contrast, etc, light stuff),
i can write documents, I have a choice of great music players/managers and had them when windows had ... Winamp 3.x or something,
I can connect to ftp servers
I can use .torrent links/sites
I can write code, debug code, install and use a web server

and most of all I can do ALL these AND OTHERS from the first second I installed Ubuntu. Try all of the above right after installing Windows XP or 7 .

What the fuck is wrong with linux on the desktop?

I can't play games, but then again, I never was a gamer. Is that reason to dismiss it? Are gamers like 80% of the desktop market? If yes, then we're screwed!

Re:I don't understand why they're doing this

[ThatsMyNick]

Ignoring a court ruling would land most people in jail for contempt of court. I think the EU should start fining corporations percentage of revenues for contempt of court (a billion is a start, but it should be higher if it has to have any effect on microsoft)

Re:I don't understand why they're doing this

[Joce640k]

A billion dollars for a browser choice dialouge? It is beyond my comphrension how this could be considered rational or acceptable in any way.

It's proportional to the company profits. All the big number means is that Microsoft earns a lot of money.

At least the final result is good.

[wvmarle]

FTA:

Market share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in Europe has roughly halved since 2008 to 29 percent so far this year as it has lost clients mostly to Google's Chrome.

Chrome controls 29.3 percent of the European browsing market, while Mozilla's Firefox has 30.3 percent of the market, according to web research firm Statcounter.

That's 90% of the market equally shared over three browsers. With the other 10% for the rest. Well I'd call that a rather healthy situation, and a great progress from 90%+ for IE.

Browser selection screen or not, the dominance of IE is obviously broken without any other browser becoming dominant, and that I'd say is good. Very good. The next step is a proper html standard, and a standard interpretation/rendering of that standard.