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EC Sends Statement of Objections To Microsoft For Violating Anti-Trust Agreement

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the go-to-court-like-it's-1998 dept.

dkleinsc writes "Three years ago, Microsoft came to an agreement with EU regulators that required them to provide users with a choice of web browsers. Last July, they found Microsoft in breach of that agreement. Today, they announced that this will result in charges, potentially resulting in fines as large as $7 billion." Microsoft gets one last chance to defend itself.

2 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdotters torn by conscience? by mumblestheclown · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    On one hand, everybody knows that the ruling was politically motivated bullshit. Squeeze the american company for a few billion pesos, even if in just a few short years technological and market developments have proven conclusively that the EU lawsuit was full of shit.

    On the other hand, it is microsoft.

    How will slashdot react? for once, acting with a bit of consistency and integrity? or more MS bashing? or both?

    1. Re:Slashdotters torn by conscience? by bsDaemon · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Frankly, if people are too lazy or disinterested to go try another web browser for themselves after the fact, I doubt they're going to know the difference, or care, when they have 5 options presented to them during an installation process they probably didn't go through since they bought a PC with the OS already installed and configured. I definitely don't think it is a $7 billion question. I doubt there is anything close to $7bn worth of equity in web browsers. They're all given away for free, except the less obnoxious version of Opera (which still sucks, but it's a European product and is probably what this whole thing is really about). These are definitely punitive damages and not compensatory damages, and thus are inherently political. It doesn't matter if it is a drop in the bucket of the aggregate GDP of EU countries -- no one said they were planning on funding their governance with this.

      And of course, I doubt we'll see any judgements against Apple for only providing Safari any time soon, and the fact that they only provide Safari didn't stop me from getting Firefox on my MBP. The fact that my Thinkpad came with Windows and thus IE, plus Lenovo-installed Chrome didn't stop me from going to downloading Firefox. And *GHASP* I managed to adjust my browser selection on my Linux workstation in my office, too.

      Maybe it's just that I'm not 14 anymore like I was when I opened this account, but I just don't really take glee anymore in watching MS get bashed around for what amounts to petty crap. It's just a damned web browser.