Chinese Government Probes Microsoft For Breaches of Monopoly Law

DroidJason1 writes The Chinese government is investigating Microsoft for possible breaches of anti-monopoly laws, following a series of surprise visits to Redmond's offices in cities across China on Monday. These surprise visits were part of China's ongoing investigation [warning: WSJ paywall], and were based on security complaints about Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office productivity suite. Results from an earlier inspection apparently were not enough to clear Microsoft of suspicion of anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft's alleged anti-monopoly behavior is a criminal matter, so if found guilty, the software giant could face steep fines as well as other sanctions.

Comments

So China is going to do

[0xdeaddead]

what the DOJ failed to do.

Monopoly Claims Are Only A Cover Story

[rsmith-mac]

Unsurprisingly, the monopoly claims are only a cover story for other policy issues with China. As TFA even points out:

China confirmed it is investigating whether Microsoft Corp. broke its antimonopoly laws, the latest sign of growing commercial and policy tensions between the U.S. and China that are roiling technology companies in both countries.

The investigation represents a new friction point between the countries following disclosures about U.S. National Security Agency surveillance and revelations of hacking of U.S. networks by China's military.

"There's a digital Cold War going on between the U.S. and China," said Alvin Kwock, an analyst with J.P. Morgan.

"The Chinese government has seized on using the [antimonopoly law] to promote Chinese producer welfare and to advance industrial policies that nurture domestic enterprises," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents major U.S. corporations,wrote in an April letter to federal officials.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, they likely would have been better off actually breaking the law, because at least that would result in a trial over the truth (and some ill-gotten gains in the process). Instead, because this is a political maneuver by the Chinese, Microsoft is being used as a scapegoat here. Any resulting punishment for Microsoft will be based on the state of Sino-American relations and whether China wants to harm the US by proxy. Which given how things currently stand, MS is looking rather screwed.

Re:So...

[Dutch Gun]

I'll bet the Chinese government took a page from the EU and figured out it could levy whatever the hell sort of fines it wants against these tech giants, and they'll probably just eat it as a part of the cost of doing business. That is, so long as they don't fine them more than it's worthwhile to do business there, because of course, said company would simply say "screw you" and leave. They figured that a charge of "Microsoft is a monopoly!" would work just fine, since that's been bandied about in the West so much already. You watch - I wouldn't be surprised if MS is going to get a nice, hefty fine levied against them, but probably not so much that they'll contemplate pulling out of China's market completely. Nothing like a government-sponsored extortion racket.

The other possibility is, like the linked article implies, that this is part of the government's push for technological self-reliance, and a move to start pushing their own operating systems and squeeze MS out of the picture. We've seen that with Google pretty clearly already. Or, maybe it's a bit of both - a way to squeeze a bit more cash out of the tech giants before eventually pushing them out altogether.

Hard to say, really. China is a mystery wrapped in an enigma to most westerners like myself.