China Gives Microsoft 20 Days To Respond To Competition Probe

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China Gives Microsoft 20 Days To Respond To Competition Probe

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday September 1, 2014 @02:12AM from the explain-yourself dept.

An anonymous reader writes "China has given Microsoft three weeks to explain "compatibility issues" in Windows and Office that could violate Chinese competition laws. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) questioned Microsoft Vice President David Chen and gave the company a deadline to make an explanation, the agency said in a short statement on its website. Microsoft's use of verification codes also spurred complaints from Chinese companies. Their use "may have violated China's anti-monopoly law", the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday."

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Free market escapades! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-01 02:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

China is more concerned about free economics than the US? Weird.
1. Re:Free market escapades! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-01 02:17 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  No, China is more concerned about free economics than US corporations.
2. Re:Free market escapades! by Chrisq · 2014-09-01 02:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  China is more concerned about free economics than the US? Weird.
  No - both are very interested when it is to their advantage to be so, less interested otherwise
3. Re:Free market escapades! by ruir · 2014-09-01 02:20 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Or are they more concerned about updating thousands or billions of pirated Microsoft workstations? They could at least use it as an opportunity to promote their version of Linux.
4. Re:Free market escapades! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-01 02:33 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Um no.
  China is more concerned about actually having to PAY for all their windows instances. This is just an opening blow in that negotiation.
5. Re:Free market escapades! by flayzernax · 2014-09-01 02:45 · Score: 2
  
  Lastly, I'm sure some libre office nerd in the Chinese Aristocracy probably got pissed when they tried to recently open an msword file and saw a lot of jibberish. It was bound to happen eventually.
6. Re:Free market escapades! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-01 03:32 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  China doesn't give a rat's ass about free economics. A good example is that any venture on their soil has to be 51% owned by a Chinese interest. Try that shit in the US, and companies will laugh themselves silly, and set up shop elsewhere.
  The issue is more of nationalism. Putting a foreign company up front of a Kafka-like kangaroo court is great for the domestic country's pride, as they have an enemy that stones can be hurled at. This is all the anti-Microsoft "investigations" are.
  At least the EU made it damn clear what they were investigating and what they were charging companies for, even though they do have a tendency to haul MS and Google on the carpet when they need a PR boost (when in doubt, some anti-Yank sentiment keeps the political office secure.) China's anti-monopoly stuff is just plain vague, and appears to be more of an extortion move than actual order of law.
7. Re:Free market escapades! by HiThere · 2014-09-02 06:19 · Score: 2
  
  You're leaving out profit. Once you feel secure in your monopoly, then incompatible upgrades are a benefit, because they force users to upgrade.
  
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  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And well they should. by Shaman · 2014-09-01 02:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

No government should be forcing its citizens into proprietary software which writes its data in proprietary ways without good, permanent ways to retrieve that data in the far future. Formats like OpenDoc are fully documented and open to public scrutiny. Not to mention the costs and risks of dealing with licensing; working with software that has no source code available.

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...Steve
1. Re:And well they should. by Dishevel · 2014-09-01 02:37 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I use Open Office daily at work. We have many PCs running open office here. I allow MS Office on one computer at the office for fuckwads that can not figure out how to not send us DOCX. Works great.
  
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  Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
2. Re:And well they should. by nashv · 2014-09-01 02:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You seem to believe that the reason people use Microsoft Office is because they are unaware of the more sensible choice. People use Microsoft Office because people resist change, and collections of people in bureaucracies resist change even more.
  Proprietary nature of information storage is considered a plus in bureaucratic circles - because many institutions have more money in their budgets than IQ or technical expertise in their staff. Proprietary means that when it breaks , somebody can be held responsible. It means that when someone doesn't understand something, they can fall back on their pre-existing knowledge of how to use a telephone and call support - thereby also absolving themselves on paper. The reason for work not done can be provided to superiors as "There is a problem with the software. Technical support is looking into it." The alternative would be to actually delve into the thing and try to fix it yourself - but that would involve learning something - which is not their job.
  Neither does it help that when it comes to open formats, the best answer you can expect is "You found a bug? Submit a patch".
  Open source software typically lacks a central authority that bureaucrats can complain to , sue if necessary, when things go wrong. The risk of licensing that you talk of is not even a factor - because the incentive to minimize one's own effort is higher than actually getting the task at hand done.
  This is always going to be a major problem unless mitigated by a Red-Hat like model of doing business. Still, the geek community fails hard at understanding why the typical institutions still use licensed and proprietary software. They are trying to approach the problem from the logical point of view, while what is at play here is human psychology, behaviour, and administrative politics.
  
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  Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
3. Re:And well they should. by king+neckbeard · 2014-09-01 03:08 · Score: 2
  
  If the government using MSOffice and you have to send and receive documents from the government, the government effectively forces you to use proprietary software.
  
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  This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
4. Re:And well they should. by pete6677 · 2014-09-01 04:28 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  LOL, good luck suing Microsoft when Office fucks up and causes you some sort of damages. They are liable for nothing, and might eventually patch the bug if they deem it worth fixing.
5. Re:And well they should. by Osgeld · 2014-09-01 05:17 · Score: 2
  
  office exports plain text, rich text and html ya know
6. Re:And well they should. by InfiniteZero · 2014-09-01 05:47 · Score: 2
  
  Liability not in the sense of suing someone, but in the sense that you won't be liable and your ass is safe.
  Say you are the CIO of a company. If you pick MS and something goes wrong, you can shift the blame onto MS. If you pick OSS and something goes wrong, well, the blame will be on you.
  Hence the old adage: nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
7. Re:And well they should. by Lennie · 2014-09-01 05:54 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Do not confuse open formats and open source software. These are 2 different things.
  
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  New things are always on the horizon
Chinese angry about verification codes by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-01 02:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Apparently just having the .iso file should be good enough. If Microsoft products can't be easily pirated, then China is pissed.
Re:What laws? by andrewbaldwin · 2014-09-01 03:08 · Score: 2

I suspect it's on the other side of the paper containing the list of patents Microsoft is claiming Android violates.
retire IE by Karmashock · 2014-09-01 04:10 · Score: 2

Its a magnet for stupid lawsuits and everyone hates it anyway.
And seriously why does MS care what browser you use... they make nothing on it either way.
of course, every OS comes with a preinstalled browser... Possibly MS should just install the chinese browser instead in china. I'm sure the chinese have something appropriately stupid to foist on people. Throw that at them and then everyone can be annoyed by the chinese government for the first five minutes of using a new machine before they uninstall it and install something they'd rather have instead.

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I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Ah, up to playing games again, China.. by Rick+in+China · 2014-09-01 14:37 · Score: 2

China already beat Google's ass, I suppose it's MS's turn. MS was pretty much OK with the fact China has free-for-all piracy with their OS/office products with the expectations that they would be charging companies for licenses and the more people are familiar with/use their OS the more it'll be the OS of choice in the future, any computer plaza has any version available for 5 yuan (less than a buck), fully cracked..but now that China is putting some effort into getting involved in the desktop OS game - target MS! Fun.
I know first hand that the SAIC *can be controlled* like an attack dog, it's a very corrupt agency. I'm not saying that MS isn't in breach of any regulations or anti-monopolistic practices in this case...what I'm saying is China doesn't typically give a shit about anything media/software companies are doing until they have an interest or feel a threat, then they decide to bring the hammer down hard and there is very little you can do about it because the general public doesn't care enough to start a ruckus - pirated copies of whatever you're selling will always be available anyways. If anyone could have evaded, Google would have - but simply got exhausted and pulled out with significant internal pains (and continuing pains.)