EU Launches Yet Another Antitrust Probe Into Microsoft 373
Connor writes "The EU has announced a new wide-ranging antitrust probe into Microsoft's practices of bundling software with Windows, as well as whether its products interoperate sufficiently with competitors' products. 'The first area of investigation will concern interoperability of some of Microsoft's products, including Office 2007, the .NET Framework, and some of Microsoft's server products.' The other prong of the investigation is a response to Opera's antitrust complaint, but will look at other products, too. 'The Commission will also look at desktop search and Windows Live as well in addition to other products. The EC says that its investigation will "focus on allegations that a range of products have been unlawfully tied to sales of Microsoft's dominant operating system."'"
It ties back to making a profit (Score:4, Interesting)
I do rather wish, though, that it was the QC department rather than the legal department that got all the funding for these ventures; the strategy of 'sue everyone and who cares about the product' didn't seem to work too well for SCO, and with the rather notable--especially in Europe--rejection of Vista, M$ would do well to take note of the problems with their product. Legal muscle and dominance of the marketplace will take you far, but such things are no excuse for honest innovation (or, if you can't do it honestly, buying it or stealing it from someone else--anyone heard of any actual production plans for those nifty tabletop computers from a few months back yet?)
A New Reality For Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a certain, and strange, Microsoft fanbase that is roughly of the mindset of "Microsoft is always teh winner". They might not even like Microsoft products but somehow identify with the company as somehow being badass and that "Bill Gates will just buy his way out of this with pocketchange LOL!" type sentiments.
Tough times ahead for that crowd. Look for much crying about how life isn't fair from them.
Good EU! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, this dont mean that Microsoft could not sell them or develope those. Just that those users who dont need a Microsoft own webbrowser or a WMP. Can remove them. OEM manufactures can install Opera or Firefox or OTHER webbrowser instead IE and VLC or any other mediaplayer instead of WMP.
How many remembers what is definition of Operating System?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system [wikipedia.org]
"An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. An operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the system. At the foundation of all system software, an operating system performs basic tasks such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing system requests, controlling input and output devices, facilitating networking and managing file systems. Most operating systems come with an application that provides a user interface for managing the operating system, such as a command line interpreter or graphical user interface. The operating system forms a platform for other system software and for application software."
And what we have left if we remove all applications what dosn't remove any of these definition parts? Just pure OS.
It would be much better if a Microsoft would become as two corporation, other to build and sell basic OS and other to sell all other software like WMP, IE, Office, Games, Outlook etc etc. Together user could get windows as it is now and every one would be happy.
And those who needs just windows OS, would get Operating System and nothing more. They could install just their games to it or software what are needed and use computer happily.
Re:Another one? (Score:2, Interesting)
Haven't they been forced to hide there Monopolistic ways more carefully now? Possibly find new ways and means of extending their tentacles just a bit further without rousing suspicion? Just a though...
Whats wrong with including apps anyways? (Score:4, Interesting)
(warning car analogy ahead)
It is kind of like telling auto manufacturers that they cannot include built in AC, CD player, or any other ameneties with their cars because it kills the third party market even though these are things that consumers expect to come with their cars.
Re:The World (Score:5, Interesting)
Economic strength is reason that the United States it the world super power; military is over-rated and a result of economic strength. American assets are priced in US dollars and as the dollar drops so does the value of the country. Additionally, a huge amount of America's debt is owed in foreign currency and as the dollar drops the debt's value increases proportionally; again making America poorer and therefore weaker. Also, as the dollar's value drops against world currencies (particularly the Euro) foreign reserves are switch from being dollar based to being Euro based; again diminishing the economic might and influence of the United States.
At this point in time the US is so dramically richer than any other state in the world that it doesn't really matter - how ever over the next decade we're likely to see the rise of two new super powers that rival the Unites States: European Union (the confused, sluggish super power) and China (the unified and aggressive super power).
The last time we saw the Unites States challenged it was by the USSR and Japan. The USSR was fundamentally flawed by actually being a totalitarian state which are inherently flawed over the long run. Japan wasn't as flawed, but it inflexible work force (worse than Europe's) has severely limited its ability to compete. In both cases the US system simply out spent and maneuvered them. I don't think the US will be able to do this again unless China's one-child laws begin to damage their economy with the upcoming population drop and Europe's reformist governments get voted out.
As for the article and topic on hand: good. M$ needs to be pushed to be competitive and not just handicapped by overly relying on their OS monopoly. Their censure by the EU will only work to improve the US economy (in the long run) and the EU consumer. Kudos to the EU for having the balls to do this and showing up the US government.
Re:Oh, No, Not again! (Score:3, Interesting)
Your analogy (like most that will be presented in this article) is flawed because it does not include a monopoly for one of the markets. No one has a monopoly on cars or on air conditioners or people might feel very differently about it. As a result of this, the AC market is not broken so people have no incentive to want change. If there was a single monopolist on cars and AC cost $5000 dollars per car and released a gas that broke other car add ons not from the car maker, then you might have an accurate analogy.
As for convincing people, why would you have to? This isn't about stopping OEMs from bundling IE it is about stopping Microsoft. By your analogy, antitrust law wouldn't stop the car dealership from installing AC into all the cars they sell, even AC made by the car manufacturer. It just stops the car maker from forcing car dealers to buy their AC regardless of which is the best deal or works best.
Am I the only one who stayed awake for my Econ 101 class? MS has monopoly influence on the desktop OS market. When they bundle a borwser with their OS, they break the Web browser market such that regardless of which browser is best, most people use IE. This is illegal in both the US and EU because it undermines the market. As a result of this behavior on the part of MS, Web technologies have been held back nearly a decade and the Web has been intentionally crippled to keep it from becoming a way to bypass MS's OS. At the same time, consumers have been deprived of the opportunity to use the best browser (most not knowing how to find and install other browsers).
This is simply not true. Bundling is a form of tying, explicitly described in antitrust law. Bundling a Web browser with any other product on which they have a monopoly is sufficient to violate antitrust law. I know most people don't want that to be the case, but it doesn't change matters at all.
Re:This is stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Number 1. Both of these are FREE PROGRAMS. You can download any version of IE and WMP for free directly from Microsoft (and yes, I am aware they don't retain older versions for downloading). You won't see Internet Explorer or WMP sitting on Best Buy's shelves.
Those programs are "free"? I mean, can I legally install in my Linux box and run under Wine?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIR and according to the EULA, starting from IE5 or IE6 you are allowed to install IE only into MS Windows.
Number 3. Those who don't know any better obviously don't care that they come included...and if they do care, they will do the research required to download and use something else.
Well, most do not care, no matter how badly trapped they are (or will be) in MS technology.
The problem is that there are people who care, and that people is being artifficially being prevented to use (or use properly) the technology they prefer because MS do not follow standards as they should.
Number 4. LINUX AND OSX!!!! It's not like Windows is the only game in town...it is perhaps for gaming, but that is not Microsoft's fault...you wouldn't try to sue Sony because your PS3 can't play an Amiga game, would you?
All I'm saying is that this is complete and utter stupidity. People that use windows don't care that they are using windows. If they care enough that they are using windows, they will look at what the other alternatives are. "But...but...but...I HAVE to use office, it's what my job uses!" That's your company's fault for using Microsoft products...no one forced them to. Just like no one has forced you to use Microsoft products.
Are you a hermit?
I ask this because, if you're not, it means you must be able to exchange information with the rest of society.
The moment you graduate and start looking for a job (you need such thing in order to be able to afford things like.. food, for example) you will be asked (or expected), most of the time, to send your CV in
About that regrettable Amiga (a great machine in its time BTW) comment of yours, I can say this: Today is not the 1980s and interoperability is not a luxury, it's an expected thing from technology.
Not to defend microsoft, but to explain the stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Taking your car analogy for a moment. Internet explorer is like the display engine for 80% of the in dash LCD systems, without it your car will run, but you won't be able to tell what your tac is doing, how much gas you have or how fast you're going.
Truly, without Internet explorer, you can't use windows explorer (without modifications anyways) the two are linked in the most godawful way humanly possible. The bar along the right, with all the crap options, the search feature with the puppy dog, all that crap is embedded IE.
Not to mention 90% of the crappy third party applications that render HTML were probably made in Visual Studio, which Microsoft has kindly included about a billion ways to embed IE with.
Here's a top five list of IE dependent 'critical' software on my work machine:
1. Outlook
2. Explorer shell (search)
3. IBM Update Utility
4. Windows Update (wuauctl)
5. IPCheck Client Utility
No doubt there are gobs more, I'm sure my corporate installed patching utility uses IE calls to download patches and lots of other crap like that...
There was a point where you could break the executable from opening, but even so unless you can find some way to get rid of the DLL, and associated calls for them every 10 seconds by some random app. even attempting to pull IE out of windows is a real pain (reboot in recovery console/bartpe delete DLLs etc.) all so you can have an OS that is totally crippled...
Re:Another one? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, they've been forced to hand over cash in fines - but fines aren't terribly effective against companies that can make more money in 3 hours than they are likely to be fined in 3 years.
As far as I can tell, every antitrust suit (in the EU at least) has focused on punishing specific actions rather than preventing general behaviour - for instance, "you bundled media player, don't do it" rather than "you systematically use your existing monopoly in one product to try and establish monopolies in other products, don't do it". That may be because Microsoft isn't an EU-based company, so the EU couldn't break them up regardless of whether or not laws to do so exist on the statute books.
Diplomats? Don't hold your breath! (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, I haven't seen any signs recently that the EU is at all impressed by the US opinion in this matter since it demonstrably operates well within the WTO framework.
Last but not least ... the US has enough troubles of its own to head for a trade war with its largest trade partner in the world. And just about the only major one with which, by the way, doesn't have a massive deficit.
So no. The EU might see some grumblings from the US, but it need't worry about any follow-up action. The EU is free to apply its fair-competition laws to Microsoft and there will be no-one in Washington willing to risk even a luncheon voucher to help Microsoft out.
So Microsoft just might just find that it's cheapest for them to play fair for a change.
While I am sure nobody at Microsoft thinks so... (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft can no longer do anything without the specture of Anti-trust law looming. I think its caused them a great deal of uncertainty in terms of product roadmap and generally taken away from their focus. The only products of theirs that seem to be improving are Exchange and Windows Server itself which are becoming functionally more like the Unix and VMS systems that inspired them in the first place. They are certainly not doin anything new; because their ain't much new to do, and skipping logical points of intergation to avoid stepping on toes that might go crying to the DOA.
Don't get me wrong I hate what Microsoft has done to the industry as much as the next Slashdoter. I also think two or three Microsofts would more then likely suck all the oxygen out room just as much as the one monolith does; but at least we might see some real progress.
Over the last six to eight years we have gotten just about exactly nothing from Microsoft of real value. Oh and don't say DotNet was inovative. It took Microsoft two years to figure out what DotNet was themselves and its not new either. Sandboxed byte code interpreters existed already; JAVA as well as others. Ok so Microsoft made some more compilers for other languagues targeting their byte code. Big deal its was an obvious move, anyone wanting to invest the man hours could have done the same thing with Java; and if nobody had well CPUs have gotten fast. Pure interpreters would have filled the space.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that MS was not guilty of antitrust violations. I am asking though what are the merits of the new accusation? Is it the same accusation, or is it different?
One of the charges is the same thing MS was convicted of in the US, but has not been charged with in the EU. Previously the EU convicted them of abuse in the server OS market and audio player software markets. They are now looking into web browsers (which they've been convicted of in the US) and other, unnamed markets.
Frankly, the market has change SIGNIFICANTLY, for better or worse, than it was in the mid 90's. Consumers expect browsers included in the OS.
Back in the day, consumers expected to have to rent a standardized, rotary phone from the phone company, not to be able to buy any phone from the store. It has nothing to do with what is legal or best for the market.
Yes, OEMs should be able to include other browsers with their systems.
Sorry, not good enough. OEMs need to consider MS's software on an even playing field with other software, with no incentive to include o not include it other than the merits of the software. The market needs to be a level playing field for everyone, or the law is being broken. OEMs should include or not include IE because they think their customers will prefer it based on its merits, not based upon artificial problems introduced into competitors (broken standards in use). If IE is included, OEMs may simply leave it and not bother making the choice and consumers will suffer and developers will still target IE because they know it will be included, while they don't know if a different browser will be. They have to bundle all of them or none of them or the market will still be broken.
it's hard to argue that with competitors doing well in the EU: adoption of FireFox ranges from 20 - 40% in some member countries
Yes, and a lot worse in other EU countries. So you consider say 30% market share, versus 60% market share when the one with 30% is faster, has dozens of features the other lacks, is more secure, and properly reads pages while IE does not, and has been that way for many years. I'd say when it takes MS six years to implement something as simple and widely acclaimed as tabbed browsing windows, that competitors are not doing well to have only 30% of the market (and that 30% is pretty generous).
If Opera were doing as well, I would imagine that they wouldn't complain.
You completely mistake Opera's market. Opera makes most of their money selling an embedded browser of phones and the like. They sell fewer browsers because they can't handle all the pages broken to work with IE and can prove that in court. They do fairly well in that space, but are still losing largely to embedded IE based upon artificial problems, not real problems with their browser.
If IE were really so abusive these days, would they have such viable competition?
All of their competition has to give away their browser just to enter the market since everyone is forced to pay for IE's development when they buy Windows. As it is, most of the big competitors were started by frustrated users as a way to get another option since no business felt entering the market against an abusive monopoly was worthwhile.
Can you tell me one good reason why MS should be able to force every windows machine to ship with IE, but the Firefox team and Opera can't force every Windows machine to ship with their products? MS does it simply because they have a monopoly and no one stops them from leveraging it. As a result, we all suffer. IE 7 still doesn't implement 8 year old standards every other browser has complied with basically forever. Moreover, there is evidence this is an intentional attempt to keep the Web itself crippled so that people can't bypass their desktop OS monopoly using web based apps. You don't see the Web itself being crippled and held bac