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Microsoft Fined €561 Million For Non-compliance With EU Browser Settlement
Seeteufel writes "Microsoft's failure to comply with an antitrust settlement about browser choice has severe consequences. The European Commissioner for Competition Almunia set a fine of €561 million (~$732 million) for the unprecedented break of agreement. Microsoft admitted its mistakes and offered further concessions."
A pretty costly bug it seems. From the EC press release: "This is the first time that the Commission has had to fine a company for non-compliance with a commitments decision. In the calculation of the fine the Commission took into account the gravity and duration of the infringement, the need to ensure a deterrent effect of the fine and, as a mitigating circumstance, the fact that Microsoft has cooperated with the Commission and provided information which helped the Commission to investigate the matter efficiently."
I can't believe that a company in 2013 would have the audacity to think it can still get away with bundling its own browser with its OS! You'd never see this sort of behavior out of more responsible corporations like Apple.
If this had been a small company the EU would have had no problem fining them 10% of revenue which is allowed for an act like this. Just because Microsoft has the lawyers to 'cooperate with the Commission' shouldn't allow them off with such a small fine.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Even at nearly three quarters of a billion dollars this still seems to be a slap on the wrist.
Obviously one of the questions of the 21st century will be whether or not there will be any way to keep just huge concentrations of power from steamrolling over every individual right. It's a huge amount of money AND nothing at the same time. It's sure as heck unlikely to influence anyone's behavior at Microsoft.
Mean while in america we fine 1.92 billion HSBC for laundering money for terrorists and drug lords. Apparently laundering money for terrorists and drug lords is only 2.5 (roughly) times as bad as not complying with an EU court settlement.
Even as a Microsoft hater of old, I'm beginning to feel sorry for MS. For sure, 15 years ago they were engaged in monopoly abuse to advantage IE. But these days, IE itself is on the way out. WebKit based browsers are the clear majority these days. And neither Apple nor Google have to offer users of their systems a choice of browser.
It must really rub salt in the wound to have a statutory obligation to offer alternatives to their minority browser.
What about OSes that don't even allow other browsers to be installed on them? Are they exempt from this type of ruling?
What if I want to run Firefox, IE and Opera on my Google OS powered Chromebook. Should Google be forced to allow this or be fined?
I hope MS continues its Non-compliance and thus financing the EU. Next it is going to be Google, Apple and Facebook for not following anti trust and privacy laws in the EU. Because of the EU the world is a better place! since it sends a clear message to companies that operate as a Oligopoly.
If this had been a small company the EU would have had no problem fining them 10% of revenue which is allowed for an act like this. Just because Microsoft has the lawyers to 'cooperate with the Commission' shouldn't allow them off with such a small fine.
Probably because no one noticed it was missing for 17 months. Eyes closed to the issue?
There is virtually ZERO chance/probability that this was a Microsoft bug.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh cut the amount Samsung is obligated to pay Apple by about $450.5 million, or nearly 43%, to $598.9 million.
And Microsoft is fined $732 million for not complying with a court order / ruling?
It sure is a *fine* story!
I don't think that's a small fine at all! I mean i think it's a pretty big dent into M$'s browser-related earnings.
bundling an "app store" into Windows 8 then designing the OS to refuse certain local API features to products that haven't been sold through Microsoft's own store, no other vendor can or has been given the chance to setup their own store or is able to offer products that can utilise those APIs without restriction, the customer (lol) cannot shop anywhere else, effectively making the OS a 2 tier system, fully featured applications or those that haven't paid MS a fee
.
a prime case of a monopoly abuse, nice try
I mean now Microsoft should be fined for trying to literally break the bank with its new UEFI/Secureboot monopolistic idiocy.
But let's go higher this time - i hereby propose 10.000.000.000 $ (ten US billions of US dollars).
And while doing that, why not stop this Secureboot crap from happening while we still can ?
Why a company with known history like that is allowed to continue its sick practices is beyond me.
This is the first time they've fined a company, but I assume you know that are are just trolling based on your user name.
Wow, you are quite the troll. The whole complaint is bullshit.
And you're just a MS hater and an asshole for complaining the fine it too small.
Retard.
...and protecting its citizens' rights! Communists! God wants corporations to be free to do whatever the f**k they like!
I'm okay with that. People should stop paying for crippled, restricted code...IE is horrible software that's non-rfc-compliant anyway. MS should be fined for even trying to sell it's products to the general public, and taking advantage of consumers. MS Charges extra for encryption, they've been caught stealing software. Shame on them for trying to swindle my parents and grandparents.
I've no problems with them doing this to MS - though I wouldn't call that a small find (maybe a touch exorbitant) I still wish they'd go after Apple.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Why do they get away with it?
In case that's not a rhetorical question, it's because we, in Europe and the US, continue to reelect the people they put on the ballot.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Go after Apple for what? They do not have a monopoly in any market.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The browsers are not just bundled but Apple doesn't even allow other browser engines like Firefox's Gecko to run on the iDevices. The maximum you can do as a browser maker is to put a different skin on top of the Safari renderer. Chromebooks don't even allow browsers.
That means there won't even be a Netscape equivalent to complain about bundling because alternate browsers are just plain banned. Software freedom and choice is more dead in the post-PC world than it was in the PC world.
This space for rent.
Macs, iPhones and iPads ships with Safari.
Most Linux dists with Firefox and I suppose Android may have a standard browser to.
OH THE HUMANITY! THE HORRORS! I HAVE TO CHANGE BROWSER MYSELF?!
Stupid.
Today the browser is even more important than the rest of the OS =P, at least (eventually) as far as the user (me at least =P) is concerned.
Will it go towards something applaudable like technology for education, or technology for the unprivileged, or will it go to pay off the lawyers, and change the office furniture (including the windows shades ;)?
That's like calling someone handsome and buff and irresistible to the ladies, you suck at insults. Hating MS is the default state of being for any intelligent and well informed person.
not sure who they will fine next month.
It does seem strange that of all the anti-competitive things that Microsoft did, bundling the browser turned out to be the sticking point. Everyone else does that, and Apple's current practice (no even allowing competing browser engines at all on iOS) seems considerably worse. Microsoft really did commit a great deal of anti-competitive behavior, mostly in the 1995-2005 period, though some of it continues today – but most of this had little to do with IE. To the extent it did, it was only possible because of their desktop OS and office suite monopolies. I think we would have been better served if Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's original remedy had been carried out and Microsoft had been split into two parts, an OS division and an apps division. If that had been done, we'd almost certainly already have Office on iOS and Android. An even better solution, suggested by some commenters at the time, would have been to split Microsoft into several "Baby Bills", independent companies which would each have full rights to the existing MS copyrights and source code. Who knows, if that had been done, one of them might have even attempted to go open source at some point to gain more market share, or been bought out by Google...
what about the windows RT lock down and the win 8 app store how will that go under EU rules?
There are other shit apple is doing, that have nothing to do with monopoly.
That seems to be the only thing that would get the attention MS should be providing.
Both parties in the (root of most evil) 2-party system are effectively identical from the standpoint of corporations.
Voting against the 'incumbent' but for the other duopoly party doesn't give corporations any reason to think anything will change, so they don't adjust behavior.
--- Mercutio was right.
Doing shit is not necessarily illegal.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
They don't have a monopoly OR an antitrust settlement to break.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Neither does MS. There has never been one time in the history of Windows where there weren't at least two or three other perfectly viable OS alternatives. I've used MAC OS's, OS Warp, various flavors of Linux, etc. over the years and have never once felt that Windows was my only option. The only thing you REALLY need Windows for is gaming. And even that is changing.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
what about the windows RT lock down and the win 8 app store how will that go under EU rules?
There has to be an EU citizen that buys these first...
the gravity and duration of the infringement
Given that the choice to use multiple free pieces of software is such a grave situation I'd expect the fine to be 0.
Not applicable. Windows RT is nowhere near a monopoly.
The laws regarding monopolies and anti-competitive behavior are more complex than the simple dictionary definition of "monopoly". Microsoft was convicted of abusing a monopoly position, and now has to deal with the results of that conviction.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Microsoft is no longer the monopoly it once was. Furthermore, Apple is doing far more egrarious violations. What about the fact that Apple refused to convert to microUSB with the new iPhone 5. Where is there fine.
At least Microsoft lets me install an alternative browser (crApple, did their darndest to prevent even that)
Well, they would loose sales if they didn't include a browser. And the browser they provide, guide people into their search engine and their advertising. This is worth money.
Also, they ignored a court order. That earned them a big slap. Serves them well, because they didn't need to do that. There were no need for the stalling, but they did it anyway. So the court set an example. The next multinational corporation may pay more attention.
It is such a pain to use other browsers and search engines on WIndows7 (by design), that I end up using them in the lab because I'm sick of the rigmarole of constant re-configuration. By contrast, it is easy to use any compatible browser and search engine in the Mac labs. There is a world of difference.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The fine is a deterrent, and a sign that in Europe, the government is more powerful than business interests. Guess all those years of fascism left a mark. Score 1-0 for democracy and rule of law.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Writing a browser: $10M
Writing an OS: $100M
EU bundling fine: $732
Desktop monopoly: priceless
There are other shit apple is doing, that have nothing to do with monopoly.
Well then they are just a member of a cartel of companies that bundle a browser with their operating systems. It is still the same to the consumer; when EVERY company does the same thing then all together they are a monopoly.
Both parties in the (root of most evil) 2-party system are effectively identical from the standpoint of corporations.
Mainly because of how fund-raising works. And now the GOP are all ra-ra about citizens-vs-united, and the campaign financing is even more susceptible to the corruption that turns congress-critters into corporate whipping boys.
There is a solution to the problem.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
... they probably made more than that by not compling and to think what sort of fines a file sharer has been getting.
What would be the scaled up or scaled down amount for one on the other?
Get your facts straight dude, IE is not freeware but requires you have a M$ windoze license. And those cost $$$. On top of that Micro$oft as a corporation was pretty close to practically OWNING the internet at one point as almost all web pages didn't follow the standards but IE shenanigans and so only worked in M$ IE.
See e.g. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-MY/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/end-user-license-agreement
They tested whether they could get away with it and arranged some (fairly transparent) level of deniability. It is really simple: This feature was on the "must work" list for all releases. Such items cannot simply be overlooked unless you are really, really, really incompetent. Not even MS manages to reach this level and certainly not for that long.
Well, now they know that they cannot get away with more of this immoral and economically damaging (to all but them) business practice. I also think the EU put the fine on the low end, even given their "cooperation".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I think the fine is outrageous. Yes, MS did breach a commitment. From what I've read, this was a mistake, and an oversight.
The reality is that they did include the browser choice window in their OS - and basically did so over a timeframe where the raw market truth is that not only are MS no longer a dominant monopoly. But that the PC itself has moved into an area where it no longer exists in the monopolistic position in technology.
Its simply not possible to make a claim today, or even in the past year that the IE browser in their OS is what it was 2, 3, 5, years back. And this personally I think should have been also considered carefully in the decision. Things have changed, and they are not as they were.
And I fail to see why people celebrate this. The dictatorship called the EU has simply hammered a business. It won't use the money well. It can't even pass its own accounts or audits. Why are the European people accepting huge fines against employers, in a harsh economic time, from an instution that is corrupt, non democratic, and incapable of even doing its own accounts.
And I'm not saying don't hit MS hard. But this is 732 Million dollars for a browser infraction. At a time where the reality is the citizens of Europe do not have a broswer monopoly problem. Its fucking lunacy.
We`re all equal
Tablets.
Might hurt a little bit more than a mosquito bite.
So. They don't make any money on their browser, but if they can artificially keep their market share of browsers high, it increases the risk that the pink bunny slippers wearing web designers will cook up websites that are made with only IE in mind.
Then, you get into the situation where you bloody well have to use windows and IE, or you can't use the web for stuff like buying books, tickets, doing banking (oh, teh irony..) etc etc etc, because all the sites you need are IE exclusive, and your platform isn't big enough for anyone else to care about. This leads to Microsoft getting to shrug off any complaints with "hey, we're not making those websites", all while they certainly make money on the situation, no?
That's why we have standards and why they are important. We already have had the situation above, and it was a huge pain. If you don't realize and recognize this, you're either extremely myopic, or paid.
Hardly. They did not even get 50% of the market in 2012 Q4.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/31/technology/mobile/android-tablet-market-share/index.html
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
I'd take the opposite approach: If this were either Apple or a non-US company, the EU would not have even bothered.
This 'the EU hates America' argument is really getting tiresome.
It's just not true.
Google (or bing, if you're a Microsoft fan) 'e.on and gaz de france' and you will see that the EU does not only go after American companies but European ones as well.
Microsoft made a deal with the EU.
They didn't stick to the deal.
There where fined. And the fine is only 10% of what it could have been according to law. So the EU went easy on Microsoft.
I guess they keep fining MS so they won't have to prosecute any other trusts.
Luckily there is no monopolistic dominance in other sectors like banking or finance.
The fine had nothing to do with estimated damages. Any users who would have accrued damages will never see a penny. This is another money grab by the EU to solve their debt problem. This is no different than the US dollar to gold rush after the US helped to rebuild the EU after WWII.
... reading the posts here is that Microsoft went out of their way to make sure IE in any form was integral to the operation of Windows.
So MS _deliberately_ made sure that other browser run worse than IE on a Windows system.
Then, after the original court order, they couldn't really backtrack to what they insisted that 'IE cannot be removed' and offer a choice of browsers to use.
In keeping with the good international banking traditions, the top management of MS will now all get fat bonuses.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Microsoft was never really punished by the EU courts. Everything you think you know is just a grand illusion crafted by Microsoft itself.
Here's the thing. Microsoft does business in Europe via methods that are corrupt and profoundly illegal. As a consequence, it has enemies- grassroot and other would be competitors. Without the corrupt business practices, Microsoft's share of the market would collapse. So...
1) Anticipating calls from various parties to investigate and prosecute MS, MS itself preempts this problem by BUYING a cluster of senior politicians across the EU.
2) MS creates a complete harmless legal case against itself- one calculated to actually earn MS sympathy from many ordinary users.
3) MS has its 'bought and paid for' politicians create a 'show' trial in which 'poor old MS' loses and is 'forced' to put a bit of extra software on its OS disks.
4) Pretty much immediately, MS stops complying with even this impossibly modest demand, telling its team of corrupt politicians that they can offer the EU a bribe in the form of a modest fine.
5) MS is fined, and spends the afternoon looking down the edges of a sofa to find loose change to pay it.
The EU Commission makes the governance of Chicago look honest by comparison. Don't believe me? Go Google about Tony Blair's repulsive pet slug, Peter Mandelson, and his activities in the EU.
This is the first time they've fined a company,
No; there have been many previous anti-competition fines and a number that were for much larger sums. This is the first time that they have fined a company
This should be the worst possible case. The available fine is up to 7Billion Euros and they haven't even fined them 10% of that.
but I assume you know that are are just trolling based on your user name.
If you stole a car, you might expect 10% of the sentence first time round. If you stole another one whilst still on parole, trust me the judge would lock you away and throw away the key. I assume from the fact that you can't see that that you, and the mods who modded me "troll" are being paid to ignore the obvious facts in front of you. This is yet another example of how the goverments bow down to the big corporations.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
The judge in the case offerred to suspend all but 39 euros of the fine; if Steve Ballmer would go to Singapore for a public flogging. Steve declined on behalf of Microsoft saying that it would not be an effective use of the executive's time spent on windows phone and the MS-surface projects.
Kind of surprised Redhat hasn't done that. They are already a juggernaut in the IT sphere
Microsoft was convicted and lost the appeal. If you were on parole and violated it they would nail you even if it was an accident!
It isn't fair when a human on parole forgets some legal detail and is nailed. That's 1 person who is not a lawyer trying to continue living their life. Microsoft is a large number of people with their own law firms who are paid to deal with such things. ZERO EXCUSES for almost any human (except the politically connected) and they can have reasonable excuses; Microsoft doesn't.
Just because they are a corporation (that is, a person in the USA) doesn't mean they should get special treatment.
The fact the EU can even fine them a decent amount shows they can't just bribe their way out of the legal system; like in the USA... Weak punishments just become part of doing business, nothing changes - the whole purpose is to force compliance!
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Talk about stupid timing. It doesn't even matter any more. The days of "writing to IE" are gone. Mobile devices, modern browsers and the transition to HTML5 has made Microsoft unimportant. They have lost the browser wars already.
Untrue; there are so many holes in IE6, it turns out to have more room than most studio apartments.
You do not need 50% market share to be a monopoly or weild monopoly power. And while their market share is sliding, they were at one time at 89%+.
I am by far not a Microsoft fan boy. I am probably closer to a linux fan boy (especially now that I can play FTL on my linux machine). Unless the EU is giving all this money to the people of Europe, the people of Europe should be pissed. There is no this doesn't translate into higher costs or lower product quality for users. Almost everybody knows how to get their own web browser, or their hacker grandson has done it for them. This idea that having the default web browser bestows some special power to monopolize the internet is retarded.
how can you fine someone a billion bucks. thats even worse than making everyone use ie -_-
And yet, Windows 8 still has IE (most likely integrated just as deeply as it was in XP). If Microsoft really does not make a penny on the browser, then why didn't it just comply with the court ruling and provide the choice screen (or even better, release Win8 without IE and let the user install whatever browser they want via the choice screen).
Yes, it is too much work to remove IE from an old OS such as XP, but Win8 was not even complete at the time EU first told MS to remove IE and/or offer choice.
Europe is the largest economic zone in human history.
Because I don't think there is enough tin foil to go around for us to accept your version of the events.
The magnitude of the fine is no inhibition to M$'s or any other company's corporate behavior, and could be an incentive to further shenanigans.
Bill Gates, give his wealth, can pay this fine all by himself for the next 50 years and still not go broke.
Standard Oil and AT&T were broken up with LESS market share than Microsoft at its peak. Medium size companies with key patents can find themselves on the wrong side of being a "monopoly" with only a few hundred million in sales... I work for a company like that.. But we were a "monopoly" to our customer/market even though we were just a fraction of a larger market.
The measure is "misusing contractual power" not raw size.
89% in a market they created.... And they have dropped faster than you could get to court.
Microsoft is STILL well over 90% on desktop sales. After 2 decades and antitrust suits on multiple continents.
There's no requirement for MS to pay, to be blunt, they are a private company selling goods and services and they can sell what they want. If the bundle a browser, so what? What's the EU going to do? Ban MS products? Meh, the consumer backlash won't be worth it. I say they flip EU the bird with a statement that says "There a bigger problems in the world than a bundled browser". If they pay, I hope it's in one euro notes (or coins), delivered by truck and dumped parking lot of the EU HQ in Brussels(?)
Does anybody remember the Windows-N (I think) fiasco, where they sold a version of XP that did not have IE bundled... so EU users could "have their own choice of browser". That would be fun... install Windows-N, and the browse to a website to download a browser of my own choice... oh wait...
so i just got an ad for chrome services, on my chromebook. That feels relevant to this, is it?
My worry here is that this pathetic behaviour by MS, throughout the whole process, has rendered nonsense as legal precedent. Half a billion for what is now a complete non issue with zero impact on consumers. Meanwhile, Apple and Google are locking in users in ways MS would have got a chubby over ten years ago.
These are dark days for capitalism, the darkest, the whole fabric of society is under attack. IT is one of the few industries which is central to our lives and welfare, and all these assholes can do is grasp and cheat and employ sharp practice. It feels like the whole world is not working, just auto dialling morons on wet afternoons on cold calls.
It reminds me of that film/ book Capitalism. All these fucking pig shareholders with their sociopathic snouts in the markets trough can go fuck themselves with a chainsaw. They need to be better then this.
Bottom line - there will be much bigger market abuses by the tech giants, and the legal precedent now wouldnt make sense to a smart ten year old. What MS did - against all advice and under constant warning, didn't even make any sense - it was pure greed and aggression. I say fine em half a bill for the nextg ten years, that would sober the pricks up.
They know what fine will get and only risk it. That is how corporations and media outlet make money. It happens all day and all night.
what about the windows RT lock down and the win 8 app store how will that go under EU rules?
Apple do it, Android manufacturers do it, everyone does that. Show me their monopolies...