EU Releases Microsoft Antitrust Report 612
Hassman writes "Ever wondered the reasoning behind the EU fining Microsoft and ordering them to sell a Media Player free version of Windows? Well now you can stop wondering. If you aren't up for the full read (it is 302 pages), check out the Reuters summary. Want more? Check out a quote from the summary: 'There is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system [as in not Windows],' he [a MS exec] wrote Gates. 'It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times...' Mmm...sexy indeed." Reader BrerBear writes "News.com is reporting that the European Union has released its report on Microsoft's conduct, to which Microsoft has pre-emptively responded. Inside are more classic examples of what one should never write in an internal memo: 'In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago,' from Microsoft Sr. VP Bob Muglia."
Common Sense ... (Score:4, Interesting)
For those who won't RTF 7 page MS response, here's my "flaimbait" quote from Microsoft's response.
All other contemporary operating systems, such as Apple's OS X, similarly tout their integrated media capabilities. The Decision expressly rejects (Para. 822) the principle that tying analysis for finished products should focus not on whether there exists a separate demand for a component but on whether there is any demand for the finished product with that component missing. For example, the fact that there is a market for shoelaces does not mean there is a market for shoes that have their laces missing. Common sense dictates that it would be misguided for regulators to require shoes to be sold in such a manner, even if this would create greater opportunities for companies that sell shoelaces. 1 The Decision goes on to dismiss the fact that all other operating systems also come with media playback software, ostensibly because some (but not all) of these finished products incorporate media players developed by other suppliers. (Para. 822.)
Go ahead, mod me down for common sense ...
As a web streaming provider (Score:0, Interesting)
This would be very bad for the Internet.
Pricing (Score:3, Interesting)
Or would the EUC be so bold as to tell some company how their products should be priced?
Re:As a web streaming provider (Score:2, Interesting)
QuickTime is used by no one else commercially except for Apple themselves.
In addition ... QuickTime pops up every Goddamn time with "upgrade to Pro?" To be fair to Real, they have removed the spyware ... it is still nearly impossible to find the free version to DL though ... but yeah, it's all Microsoft's Fault! Damn them for making a better (or atleast more consumer friendly) product!
Re:As a web streaming provider (Score:1, Interesting)
Run for your life! (Score:5, Interesting)
Black urged them not to intervene. He said Microsoft was pressuring the U.S. government to pressure the European Union to ease off Microsoft.
Am I the only European here scared by this snipet from the Reuters article? Are we going to be bombed? Colin Powell is involved, next will it be Rumsfeld? What kind of excuse will he find this time?
Re:As a web streaming provider (Score:5, Interesting)
Win32 API (Score:5, Interesting)
And really, MFC gets a bit of a bad rap. Sure, Document/View is horrible, but other parts of MFC are pretty well done. That, and one thing MS has done pretty well is release a good IDE. It's mostly consistent, and yeah, .NET IDE is drastically different at first, but it took me about 5 minutes to get it to behave like VC 6.
Now please just don't get me started on the clusterf*ck known as COM/DCOM or the abomination that is .NET... both of which make me glad I switched to Linux 3 years ago at home.
Re:Pricing (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why. Having MS Windows bundled with WMP offered cheaper than MS Windows alone is considered a discount and such not allowed under the indiction.
Am I naive? (Score:2, Interesting)
Several more kicks in the ass, just like the WMP case definitely help getting there. You might want to see Microsoft destroyed, sure. But would you really mind seeing Microsoft just becoming true Good Guys?
Re:Run for your life! (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been a number of high profile spats over competition law recently, notably the GE v Honeywell merger - accepted in the US, and then rejected by EU competition authorities (but later allowed after GE gave specific undertakings to divest certain business units and so on). Not to mention the banana wars
In general though, the US has been getting a little techy about the growing independence of the supra-EU state. The next biggest issue is the EU's design to create its own defence forces, the US sees this as a worry because it weakens the need for NATO and creates two large divisive superpowers (witness the continentals vs. US wrt. iraq).
There are other good examples (Airbus vs. Boeing a good one for indication of how EU has succeeded in generating huge manufactures; EU space programs another one).
Re:Win32 API (Score:2, Interesting)
Greater Responsibility (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, no they don't HAVE to take on a greater responsiblity; as they have shown all along. But if the market is going to get better instead of worse then they must be forced to.
Real use to be such a superior product until they thought that Microsoft was going to buy them out.
Re:Customer Loyalty? (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows users, more often than not, do it out of ignorance that there are alternatives, even *better*, or at least sufficient, than their existing solution.
Re:Actually that IS a valid point. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pricing (Score:2, Interesting)
But considering WMP is pushed quite a bit in WindowsUpdate and WMP itself is `free' while its rival products are not, this doesn't really promote competition does it:
Windows + (something else):.costs X+Y (Y>0, I assume)
Windows + WMP:..............costs X
Windows:....................costs X
So unless Windows without WMP *has* to be cheaper, or RealPlayer/QuickTime/Whatever are given away for free, the Microsoft deal is still better, right?
Re:To the Owners/Managers of Any Company (Score:3, Interesting)
I even think that for-pay Open Source might be a great advantage for smaller companies entering the field as it would reduce the fears of potential customers that this new and small company will be gone tomorrow and with them all support for their software and all means to adapt the software and fix it.
Re:Not to mention... (Score:2, Interesting)
With the exception of 2 multi-national phb-fests, I have done the same. Oddly enough my experience has been the opposite. Just to be fair, my current gig consists of 2 employees: me and another guy who has a clue, I guess.
> Bob from accounting knows about computers and knows how to fix issues if they come up.
Yes, and you end up with 'fixes' appropriate to 'Bob from accountaing.' I can recall one of these 'experts' rebooting our ftp server because 'it wasn't responding' and it's how he 'fixes' his computer. Then again, after watching fsck do it's work, 'expert' realized the network cable wasn't plugged in.....
> These companies do not have the budget for a full time system administrator
Again, my experience has been the opposite. And also again, to be fair, it hasn't always been full time sysadmin, but at least a primary individual responsible for these duties. Contrasting our 2 expereinces, maybe I've just had better luck finding organizations who realize they 'get what they pay for.'
Re:Ironic that the EU used Windows pdf software (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is a monopoly and they've just said so. It would probably be MORE ironic if they WEREN'T using Windows.
Serious question... (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess where I am going is... is the hatred
Mwhahahah (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh Jesus! That made me laugh really hard. I remember trying to show a new website to a manager once. The site was coded with XHTML and CSS. He was running IE 5.0 at the time; this was about a month ago. I guess up until that point, he thought his system was running perfectly, too. And he was wrong. When he pulled up the site to look at it, the CSS didn't show up so all he could see was the basic web page -- and he got hopping mad about it; asking why we spent so much money developing it. He basically shot first and forgot to ask questions later. He's the manager nobody likes very much, so I guess IT just kept skipping his office upgrades, as punishment. When I updated his system, he asked what I did with the old crappy site because he wanted to show someone how much money we wasted. He liked the *new* site though.
Re:Run for your life! (Score:2, Interesting)
Bush is not an international politics ace. He firmly believed Iraq was the number one threat after Osama bin Laden despite any argument to the contrary.
Bush felt he was resolving the issue which cost his father re-election. He thought that on the streets, there was a significant feeling of "We should have ousted Saddam in 1991" which he thought would still apply in 2003 and make him incredibly popular.
The American economy was struggling. War is good for business whether the enemy has oil or not.
And that about sums it up. "Getting oil" is an outright ridiculous conclusion, in my opinion. "Seizing Iraq's economy" is not far from the truth - look at Afghanistan. Those guys don't have any resources to fund their recovery from war and we're doing everything we can to leave that country without causing a disaster. American companies aren't moving to Afghanistan en masse. There's no reason to. Iraq, on the other hand, has economic potential that America can benefit from.
The fact remains that America always has and still does buy very little oil from the Persian Gulf, and even less from Iraq. The Persian Gulf sells most of its oil further east - China, Russia, Japan. The United States is not about to engage in passive-aggression against those countries - especially not to the extent of screwing with their oil supplies in the long term.
The economic reason for going to war with Iraq is that Iraq can continue to sell its oil (to non-US buyers) and use that money to pay for reconstruction (with profits going to primarily American contracts.) There were a myriad of political reasons, almost all of which backfired on Bush, in my opinion.
Re:Common Sense ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just where can I go and get the open specs for Sorenson used in just about all of Apple's QuickTime files?
It is real easy to see that Apple is doing most of the stuff that MS is doing, with the only difference being that Apple has an extremely small market share. I personally think this EU ruling is silly and will only strengthen MS's position. The EU had the chance to make some real progress in stopping the MS monopoly and they blew it. The EU should have ruled that MS can include what they will, however since they are a monopoly, thus MUST INSURE interoperability by opening up specs to audio/video formats, office formats, API's and protocols. Otherwise, MS's products have an unfair advantage in the marketplace since they have access to the OSes hidden "stuff" whereas the competition does not. And actually some of the leaked MS source showed just this. There were tweaks/fixes made in the OS code for non-OS products such as MS Office. I would not have a problem with that if any competitor were allowed to have tweaks and fixes put into Microsoft's OS code for their products. Since no competitor can get tweaks/fixes into MS's OS, it gives MS an extreme advantage in the market place.
If the EU made a ruling along these lines, I would stand behind that. The EU's current ruling is just silly and will have no effect.
The Big Apple? (Score:2, Interesting)
How did Microsoft come to dominate the market, if not through their business practices? They got big not necessarily by being better, but also by kneecapping those who did better with system "improvements" which happened to break their implementations. (see also "anti-competetive practices.")
Would people treat Apple as bad as Microsoft if they were as big as Microsoft? Maybe not quite as bad. It'd be close, anyway. Sure, they user experience would be better (for most, anyway), but Big Apple'd probably still keep their architecture closed, and given their history of litigating against people who try to copy their look, their legal department would eventually need their own zip code. For that alone, people would come to despise them even moreso than now.
In any case, there would be many happy and complacent with the leader, even if that company were chaired by Satan himself. At a dinner out a few years ago, my father voiced the opinion that the world should standardize on Windows. (Hint: he's old and doesn't want to learn anything else)
And then some are just never satisfied with the leader. Some like buying cars, fully loaded, off the showroom floor and tooling around in them the same day. Others like assembling the parts themselves. For those who like getting into their boxen up to their elbows and rewriting parts of the operating systems to fill their need, there would still be a need for Linux.
It also bears mentioning that if Big Apple is anything like Current Apple, they'd probably be finessing and romancing Linux instead of using FUD. Except where Linux copied Apple's looks, in which case in go those damned lawyers again! So Big Apple's business practices would earn them a few less brickbats, that's all.
And as for your other question:
Sadly, some /.'ers hate anything that isn't Linux.
Re:Win32 API (Score:3, Interesting)
The other issue that I had was performance. It's been my experience with .NET that it's PAINFULLY slow. Slower then JVM, even. It shouldn't take a top of the line box to get me the same responsiveness as running KDE on an old 266 MHz Pentium2 box.
Also, .NET was supposed to replace COM, but it doesn't. You can still drop in COM objects (such as IWebBrowser) and run. At that point, is the code managed? No - once again - then what's the point? Security? No, because if managed code can just call P/Invoke, then nothing is stopping insecurity... Rapid Application Development, OK - maybe - but wasn't that VB's claim to fame?
So that's why I see .NET as an abomination..
Re:A worth reading (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Here is a question. (Score:2, Interesting)
My recollection is that Real Player appeared years before Windows Media Player. In fact, when it was first released it was the only streaming media player in the marketplace.
Real's original strategy was to give away Player so they could sell their streaming servers. Too bad that wasn't a very good business plan, but don't blame that on Microsoft.
FWIW, I use Mozilla for browsing but WMP to play streaming media. I, too, got tired of jumping through all Real's hoops just to get a free player. I have similar feelings to those expressed by other posters here about the "upgrade to Pro?" popups in QuickTime.
Contrast this situation with that of Adobe Acrobat. They, too, give away Reader to encourage content creators to buy the Acrobat production products, and it looks to me like they've been very successful. Of course, the fact that people need to exchange documents more than they need to view streaming media, and the fact that Acrobat costs a couple hundred bucks, not thousands like the streaming servers Real sells, may have something to do with this.
Re:Serious question... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do I feel like I am being attacked? hehe.
I've used Windows plenty. There is good and bad about every OS. I think the reasons I use are: ease of use, cheap hardware, and lots of software I can use on it (specifically games). Sure you can argue these points for every other OS, but right now I think MS has the balance of these I require for my desktop.
Problem I had with BSD is hardware support.
I also tried out Linux for well over a year on my desktop... and I have to say I was unimpressed (uh oh, bye-bye Karma).
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, I run it on various servers I have at home that are dedicated to certain tasks. But I think I am too tied to the applications I like to run. The answer people give me is Wine... which is not a good answer. Everytime I need to run something in wine, it requires hours of screwing with to get everything working right (if you are so lucky to actually have it work). After my year and a half with Linux on the desktop, I was happy to go to XP.
Now OSX looks awesome. The only thing that keeps me from doing it is the cost (hardware and all new software) and the fact that there really isn't as much software for it. There are some games I like to play on occassion that do not have version for the Mac. I could just keep 2 machines, but the cost seems too high.
But the purpose of my post wasn't really to compare what OS is better. That's just a religious war.
Re:Interest in Microsoft-bashing is dwindling (Score:5, Interesting)
In case you haven't noticed, Slashdot is full of 'foaming-at-the-mouth' loons from both sides of the aisle. The difference between the two groups is minor, even trivial; they both want everyone else to think the same lock-step, ask-no-questions, vomit-the-party-line way that they do, and view any opposition to their blather as heresy. The actual argument is irrelevant when it comes to fanatics; they're all the same animal, all looking to impose their morally/intellectually superior view on everyone else.
Fanatics are the bane of civilized society. Fanatics oppose freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of action. Fanatics are little would-be tin-pot dictators whose most cherished goal is to gain power over everyone else around them. The actual point of contention is is just a means to achieve this; it's the fanaticism itself, and the imposition of it on everyone else, that's the real goal.
So we have groups like this:
- MS is evil. Down with Satan!
- I worship Bill Gates! I dream of blowing him!
And like this:
- Open source = communism! Communists suck!
- Open source is divine writ!
Not to mention this:
- monopoly capitalism and corporate oligarchy are they greatest economic systems on the planet! I know, 'cuz I'm so smart and cool I'm going to be in the inner circle someday - I just know it!
- socialism is the only way to go! For the 'greater good'. Which is defined by my own morally superior self, of course. Bow down before me, you ignorant, capitalist swine!
And like this:
- Free software is anti-capitalist!
- All software should be free! Kill the capitalist pigs!
And, of course, this:
- The RIAA/MPAA are the Holy Church! Kill the piratical, thieving infidels! Oh, and ignore the fact that copyright violation is neither piracy nor theft, we'll be sure to buy enough Congressmen to change that soon enough!
- information wants to be freeeeee! Unless it's my credit card number, and social security number, and my email password, and, um, forget that, at least it wants to be free when I'm downloading music that I'm going to keep and have no intention of ever buying!
Fanatics, one and all. Filthy little vermin who take great joy in trying to make the vast majority of us moderates miserable - because how else can you tell whether or not you have power over someone, unless you make them miserable?
Would that we could sterilize them all at birth. Or at least conduct some post-natal abortions.
Max