EU Set To Charge Microsoft Over Ruling Breach 254
New submitter quippe writes in with some bad news for Microsoft. "Microsoft Corp will be charged for failing to comply with a 2009 ruling ordering it to offer a choice of web browsers, the European Union's antitrust chief said on Thursday, which could mean a hefty fine for the company. U.S.-based Microsoft's more than decade-long battle with the European Commission has already landed it with fines totaling more than a billion euros ($1.28 billion). The Commission, which opened an investigation into the issue in July, is now preparing formal charges against the company, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said."
They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want to really make any pressure on MS.
If I fail to pay the fines to city police, they seize my car until I pay.
The law should be equal to everyone.
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Nah, what would make a bigger impact is to revoke Microsoft's copyright in the EU and splash MS software downloads all over the governments websites.
Re:They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, what would make a bigger impact is to revoke Microsoft's copyright in the EU and splash MS software downloads all over the governments websites.
And that might have the "unintended" consequences of hurting sales of Apple's shiny-shitty (not exactly a disaster), hurting adoption of Linux and LibreOffice (sad, but not affecting very many), and slightly boosting the sales of anyone making software for Windows (the biggest tragedy).
Re:They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as someone who's been using Linux and championing it in server and limited, special purpose desktop environments since the 90s, I wholeheartedly agree with your general premise. That said, I think there's an important lesson here that you probably see yourself, but didn't express.
Apple went from Mac OS 9 in 1999 (the final progression in the "classic" series beginning with 1.0 in 1984, closely followed by Windows 1.0 in 1985 [albeit only a highly limited MS-DOS graphical shell]) to Mac OS X in 1999/2000 following the purchase of NeXT in the 90s. This essentially meant Mac OS became a *nix operating system with a pretty GUI; the emphasis on its lineage is further reinforced by the release of Mac OS X Sever prior to a general desktop OS release. Especially considering the company's prior struggles and obvious challenges maintaining its existence as an integrated systems vendor (operating system plus their hardware), they really bet the farm on this.
As it turns out, Mac OS X became what many people expected from the "Linux on the desktop" dream, at least in terms of basic *nix underpinnings and reasonable extensibility. This occurred because Apple drove the campaign bus, so to speak, as a single corporate entity bent on carving out its share of the market pie. They delivered what the market judged to be a good product, largely based on usability principles (that we may or may not personally agree with) and reputation for It Just Works reliability.
Consequently, Apple is now the most valuable company in the world [forbes.com]. While I continue to operate all my server infrastructure on Debian, I'm typing this from a three year old MacBook Pro. In my view, consistency, stability, support, and marketing to tell the world about all of it have won the day for Apple. I have yet to see a single Linux vendor competently fulfill those requirements when it comes to mass market desktop sales. Perhaps I never will. In the end, that's actually okay with me, since I will simply continue to use the tool that works best and is best accepted in business environments for different roles. For several years running, that's mostly meant Debian on servers and Mac OS X on desktops, and things Just Work.
Re:They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:5, Interesting)
QFT. If the extremists could stop treating OS choice as some kind of religion they might find that your post pretty much sums up the optimum setup for your typical *nix guy.
Of course there are plenty of trees you can use to justify this not being the wood you are looking for, confirmation bias (which I realise I am also guilty of by singling out the parent as being all that is right with the world!) is strong, no more so then in the nerd, whose superior intellect quite easily rules out the subpar opinions of others!
I think those that are locked into windows face the toughest challenge, the initial switch is hard. Redhat 8 was my baptism of fire. What *is* up with this 'X' thing why does it look so farked, why can't I hear anything, why are my graphics so shit, why doeas my machin keep locking up? wtf I can't access the network etc etc happy days :D
For anyone that can (ie isn't *truly* dependant on windows as opposed to just not wanting to learn something new) take the plunge into the *nix based world though, there awaits freedom choice and power.
So for me, really OSX is "linux on the desktop". It's just another distro, I tried several and when I hit osx it was game over, thanks everyone else for playing.
OSX's hackery to the standard base is no more or less weird than your other monolithic distros' changes. Their package manager is shit hot. There are no driver issues, the gui is slick etc etc I know its not free as in beer, or free as in speech. Those things are way down my list, I just need to get shit done. If freedom or freeness is important to you, then OSX is not for you.
Apple attracts its fair share of haters in absolute terms thats inevitable because of its penetration in the market. It would surely be interesting (if it were possible to measure such a thing?) to know what the relative satisfaction of each OS userbase was in percentage terms.
I know us OSX users are stupid and not real developers, dbadmins, sysadmins etc. It's odd though I never feel the need to deride people that stick with Linux. My advice (if you can call it that) comes from a genuine delight in having found what I think is a great setup, and I want to share that with people. If they aren't interested then that's their choice (and if they haven't even tried it, then its hard not to feel a little bit of pity, however patronising that might sound).
The name calling really undermines the credibility of any argument against OSX being the best *nix on the desktop out there. With linux (gentoo for me, but please choose whichever you like best) on the server boxen, It really feels like the best of both worlds, i've never been happier.
I don't get why all the OS rage from windows/linux desktop users? it's almost like something might really be amiss ;)
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I don't get why all the OS rage from windows/linux desktop users? it's almost like something might really be amiss ;)
I'm really not full of rage when I tell you a company that is moving its overpriced barely upgradable closed computers to overpriced closed electronics. With software tied to hardware is a *NIX guys dream [I think I felt the marketing wave make me feel ill at that point].
Personally I'm a little tired of large posts containing nothing but adversing slogans ;) The bottom line is though Apple is a vile company that needs to boycotted. :(
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Maybe you can explain how you come to the conclusion that OS X is closed (on the computers). Then again, that is me expecting too much since you have no knowledge of the subject, and are just ranting.
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What do you mean about the "package manager" being "shit hot"? I tried using an MBP as my web development machine for a while, but ended up switching to Ubuntu because it was much easier to get an up to date Apache/Perl environment set up using Aptitude. Not to mention that all the media players available on OSX back then were awful. I use Spotify now though so that problem has taken care of itself.. but I'm quite happily using Windows 7 at work right now, with Mint in a VM when I need it.
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Yes I wasn't clear. I was alluding to the app store being quite a good central repository of software. Consumer software though.
If you need apache/perl you'll be messing with the internals, in which case you are going to probably going to have to get used to apple's particular flavour of *nix. For me it was no more or less difficult than figuring out the implementation details of various other distros (eg launchd vs sysvinit)
I'd recommend homebrew (some prefer macports) - analagous to portage, or yum. It's
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I tried Macports at the time, but basically once I started using CPAN it just got messy. With Debian based distros you can usually get what you need as apt packages rather than even messing around with CPAN, and then everything keeps itself updated and satisfying dependencies etc, so it makes things a breeze to set up.
It wasn't you, but it's worth trying Linux every few years just to see how things have improved. I used to have the same tweaking issues on Linux up until around the 2011 versions of Ubuntu. T
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If freedom or freeness is not important to you, then you are stupid and not a real developer, etc.
You can't argue with facts like that.
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Consequently, Apple is now the most valuable company in the world
Only because of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, none of which run on a *nix-like OS or share the *nix philosophy in any way whatsoever.
Re:They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep hearing people like you saying linux isn't prepared for the desktop and here I am using it for years.
* I do web development at work and I have everyhting I need on Ubuntu. I've used it on desktop and laptops without issues.
* My wife and my kids use it at home (my kids are 6 and don't even know what Windows and Linux is, or care, they just use the browser for flash games). My wife uses it for browsing and for document editing (at a level where google docs would suffice).
* I use it at home for web development, browsing, soemetimes even RAW image editing (for which I admit I boot to a 3 years old XP install I only need for Lightroom/Photoshop)
What does "the desktop" mean ???
Audio editing, CAD, 3d modelling (blender?), video editing?
Aren't those too "niche"? Not beeing able to run Avid or Maya to build the next Avatar movie disqualifies it as usable for the desktop?
In MY opinion that's not "the desktop", sorry. That's a niche you need specified hardware and software anyway.
Note:
I do run into issues sometimes, but SO DO I ON Windows XP!
Otherwise I'm perfectly able to:
plug my DSLR and download images off it,
i can play dvd's,
I can create dvd's,
I can capture DV video of a handycam,
I can quickly edit images in GIMP (crop, resize, a bit of contrast, etc, light stuff),
i can write documents, I have a choice of great music players/managers and had them when windows had
I can connect to ftp servers
I can use
I can write code, debug code, install and use a web server
and most of all I can do ALL these AND OTHERS from the first second I installed Ubuntu. Try all of the above right after installing Windows XP or 7 .
What the fuck is wrong with linux on the desktop?
I can't play games, but then again, I never was a gamer. Is that reason to dismiss it? Are gamers like 80% of the desktop market? If yes, then we're screwed!
Re:They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:4, Funny)
What the FUCK is "desktop" anyway?
It's basically browser, email, mediaplayer, office suite and that one, age-old, weird, custom Windows-only application that nobody besides you even knows exits and you absolutely cannot do without.
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Browser, email, media player, libre office suite are identical or superior on Linux.
I think that Linux is not desktop ready, but it seems I do not have the same understanding of "desktop" as you.
2 weeks ago, I booted a ubuntu live CD and my nvidia video card was not correctly handled, it was unusable.
When I do a copy/paste, I have to
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The main "Desktop" market is Business users, i.e. System Admin's and CIO's they want a system that "just works" and they know already
They hate with a passion every new version of Windows as it causes them hours of work in testing and deployment, but at least they can run in parallel
Anything other (Mac or Linux or anything else) is simply ignored as not an option unless they are forced to use it
The only reason Apple devices are used in these environments is because Designers love them and so the the deskto
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I'm also saying that it COULD be a solution for home users, if those users are able to make an informed and educated decision about their OS.
I'm not in the US and I've never bought a brand PC or a PC with an installed OS. I have always installed my own OS's. So if more people coould do tha
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What the fuck is wrong with linux on the desktop?
You're only thinking like a home user. When you have one off requirements you can have one off solutions. Since MS is the only vendor with a true corporate solution (integrated AD, DNS, DHCP, Group Policy/Mobile Device Management, Messaging/Collaboration, DB, Web/Intranet, Office Apps etc), then MS will always rule this space. And since people use this at work, it's only natural they want the devil they know at home.
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We all know what desktop is, so let's not waste time defining it.
The GP didn't say Linux could not be used on the desktop. Indeed some people do use it as a desktop. Something less than 1%. He pointed out that Linux has been tried for years in the court of public opinion, and it's failed to gain any kind of widespread favour. And there's no sign it ever will. OS X has taken it's place as the alternative desktop for people that want to get away from Windows.
The fact that you are one of those few that do use
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When they say "it's not ready for the desktop" they mean that Linux has a tiny userbase compared to Apple and Windows. Many MS users listen to and repeat the FUD (I'm sure you've seen it, "you have to use the command line, there aren't any apps, it's hard to use" bullshit).
The fact is, as you say, given the right distro Linux is far more capable and useable than Windows in every way. I'm running kubuntu on one machine and W7 on another, the kubuntu machine will do everything the W7 machine will, but kubuntu
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You obviously need other reasons than usability to explain market share on the desktop.
The usability of the Linux desktop surpassed Windows well over a decade ago, but as you correctly point out adoption rates are close to zero. Even Apple which has arguably better usability than Windows have a very small share of the desktop.
Clearly usability has *nothing* to do with market share.
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What affects market share is what is pre-installed. Although modern linux distros work better than windows in almost every way, the vast majority of people will never have any OS on their machine that didn't come with it. As long as Microsoft has all the big OEMs tied in to effectively windows only contracts, Windows will be what everyone uses. It's big time anti-competitive abuse of a monopoly, but the government doesn't really care, so we're stuck with it.
This is also the reason for the EU enforcing the b
Re:They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:5, Interesting)
And there is no mass shift to Mac - it's stable at around 5-6% market share of browser users
Actually, it's risen steadily from 5% to 7% over the past few years. It may sound like a slow rise, but when you consider that only 20% of the PC market is home machines, and the rest is enterprise. Then you consider that paired with apple having near 0 penetration into the enterprise market, and you get to the conclusion that apple's share of the home market has gone from 25% to 35%... That's walking about money.
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App
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Market share is not profits: You will realize this when you start looking at Ferrari versus Toyota.
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I've tried it on and off for desktop use since 1997 and TBH, it will never get there.
What distro? There is no "Linux", there are a lot of different ones. Red hat makes an excellent server OS but a shitty desktop OS. Mandriva and kubuntu and likely others are head and shoulders above Windows in every measure except "shiny". Windows has no features those distros lack, and they have many features Windows lacks. The things Windows does, those distros do better. Both distros are far easier to use and require fa
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other problem such as not being able to transition from MS's proprietary stuff like C: and \ to the standard Unix way
Most home users of Windows probably never get as far as seeing C: or \ on their machines anyway so that shouldn't be a problem.
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Something that millions of people want because they think it's cool and looks great, even though it lags behind every other system in terms of usability, functionality and cost.
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Eu commission should simply ban Windows for downloads, sales, updates, cloudy stuff and so on.
Just like (or more strict than) cocaine. It's forbidden to have, to sell, to use, to show and so on.
Placing a fine without any result but making money is useless as far as the law enforcement is concerned.
If the EU MS offices/officials would break the law, then they'd apply the law for illegal acts.
Your question should have been: and what should we do in the meantime?
My answer is: use the alternatives (Solaris, Lin
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That's a bit naive.
People really need to understand exactly how important Microsoft is to the world if you like that concept or not. They provide the computing infrastructure for all your utilities and all your jobs. Everything is machine driven these days and they are the first choice vendor because to be honest, their shit works, is cheap and there are plenty of skilled people out there.
If this was to happend, first the importers will fall, then the resellers, then the e-commerce outlets, then the busin
Re:They have to ban Windows in EU (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft OS is not important, they don't provide any infrastructure at all.
Servers running Linux and other Unix-like OSes are much more important.
Most of the PCs you see in offices just run a browser to access a centralized application. When HTML5 will be made the standard, this situation will become more and more widespread.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is not important any more [toptenreviews.com]. But it should be just a browser, not a piece of software tightly bolted into the OS.
And when you buy a brand new PC you have to pay also for Windows in almost all the world. whether you like it or not.
Shops could have PCs without any OS on the shelves. It's be up to the customer to ask for an OS of they choice and later on to choose the browser they like.
NO, you are definitely wrong. Microsoft is not important. Freedom is.
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I think you are living on another planet. Some corrections:
They don't provider any infrastructure. Neither does UNIX/Linux. Most of the infrastructure is dedicated hardware still. People like F5, Juniper, Cisco, Alcatel, Lucent etc. Most of this stuff runs on custom platforms and kernels and occasionally something esoteric like Erlang. Hardly any of it sits on *NIX platforms, bar mail relays.
As for servers running UNIX/Linux - yes there are lots. I mean look at Google, Facebook and most of the hosting com
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I am not 100% sure, but I would bet that all that "dedicated" hardware is just embedded Linux/BSD/QNX/whateverNix.
For sure is not embedded Windows nor dedicated silicon.
Please, prove that
it's all moving to Windows as the value proposition is better
I don't believe that.
Security holes ii OSes are the worst beast. Windows holes get fixed in a matter of weeks (to be optimistic). The other OSes get fixes within days.
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Can you get rid of Interweb Exploder?
When you buy your car, you choose what you want: color, type of engine, type of gears and tyres and so on.
You cannot choose how many tyres or whether have the steering wheel or not.
Why cannot I do the same with my PC? With my (it's mine because I pay for it) OS?
IE is like the steering wheel? Or is it more like the body color?
And, finally, I'm really sad for your company. Sincerely.
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You don't get to choose what operating system your ECU uses do you?
IE is a blob of software. Its use is inconsequential.
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If you choose to stay in a jail don't complain for lack of freedom!
Windows (XP) is probably the best UI ever seen on PCs. But that's all. Everything else just sucks.
Maybe Linux distributions are not that rock solid, but they are indeed very effective even on old hardware.
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It's pretty easy to refute your "facts", considering that you didn't bother checking most of your links. Going only partway through your list, I found a good chunk of the schools you listed didn't run Windows:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.pace.edu [netcraft.com]
F5 BIG-IP Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat) 28-Sep-2012 198.105.44.27 Pace University
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.ucsc.edu [netcraft.com]
Linux Apache 28-Sep-2012 128.114.109.5 University of California, Santa Cruz
http://uptime [netcraft.com]
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Look also here: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-201108-201208 [statcounter.com]
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The law should be equal to everyone.
Yeah, because the EU doesn't single out MS at all. I'm sure they also make Apple offer a browser other than Safari in OSX and iOS too.
Oh wait...
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The ruling is specifically about the convicted monopolist. Once Apple reach approx 90% market share on the desktop we can revisit their anti-competitive behaviour, but at their current market share the amount of effect they have on the overall browser usage in the EU is pretty negligible.
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Microsoft had been warned and sworn under oath that the choice screen was there when it was not.
To bring you up to speed.
Question: have they ever paid a single Euro? (Score:2)
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Here you go
In 2008 MS was fined US$ 1.35 billion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#February_2008_fine [wikipedia.org]
Re:Question: have they ever paid a single Euro? (Score:5, Informative)
We keep reading that they're being investigated, charged, "fined", but cut to the chase: what actual sums have left Microsoft's account and gone into the Brussels swill trough?
The summary says $1.28 billion, i.e, just slightly more than Apple got from Samsung in a patent lawsuit where the jury didn't understand how prior art worked.
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I picture you without a girlfriend and stuck in a dead-end job, where the only relief for your frustration is trolling people on Internet forums.
$1.28 billion? No problem! (Score:2)
$1.28 billion? No problem, Microsoft can win that back with a patent suit or two !
At least the final result is good. (Score:4, Insightful)
FTA:
Market share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in Europe has roughly halved since 2008 to 29 percent so far this year as it has lost clients mostly to Google's Chrome.
Chrome controls 29.3 percent of the European browsing market, while Mozilla's Firefox has 30.3 percent of the market, according to web research firm Statcounter.
That's 90% of the market equally shared over three browsers. With the other 10% for the rest. Well I'd call that a rather healthy situation, and a great progress from 90%+ for IE.
Browser selection screen or not, the dominance of IE is obviously broken without any other browser becoming dominant, and that I'd say is good. Very good. The next step is a proper html standard, and a standard interpretation/rendering of that standard.
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Only if chrome is shipped as the default browser on the vast majority of computers sold...
Microsoft didn't get in trouble for IE being popular, they got in trouble for abusing their Windows monopoly to force a default of IE on to the majority of computers. If all those people had chosen IE for themselves then the EU never would have been involved in the first place.
Now what about windows and mac app stores with the (Score:2)
Now what about windows and mac app stores with the same lock in??
and the systems that can only run app store apps?
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Now what about windows and mac app stores with the same lock in??
and the systems that can only run app store apps?
They're not important.
Take their Ball and Go Home (Score:2)
I wish Microsoft would take their Windows and just go home. I'm sure they've already made a bunch of money off of it. See how long a ban in the EU would last.
First Google, for maybe putting their results higher on their product. No Microsoft for putting their product first on their Operating System. And they let Apple keep selling their iCrack devices just because it has rounded corners. Fuck all govts. This is just a big money grab for the EU to try and shore up some holes in their budget. Before l
Re:I don't understand why they're doing this (Score:5, Informative)
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You can ship the screen in the code, but if you never show it to users what good is it then? Microsoft admits they didn't comply, so what's the problem with the EU fining Microsoft?
A billion dollars for a browser choice dialouge? It is beyond my comphrension how this could be considered rational or acceptable in any way.
Why not make it a trillion dollar fine and fill out interpols most wanted roster with Microsoft employees?
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A billion dollars for a browser choice dialouge? It is beyond my comphrension how this could be considered rational or acceptable in any way.
Has it been stated anywhere that they will also fine this specific violation at 1 billion dollars?
I mean, just because the last time Microsoft violated EU laws it got slapped with a fine of that size, it does not follow that this different violation will get the same penalty.
Anyways, the fine is "up to 10% of yearly global revenue", and could include daily fines if Microsoft doesn't fix the issue in a timely manner.
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Anyways, the fine is "up to 10% of yearly global revenue", and could include daily fines if Microsoft doesn't fix the issue in a timely manner.
Is it just me who thinks that "up to 10% of yearly global revenue" might possibly be worth it for Microsoft?
It certainly could have been worth it back when they were the clear browser-war winner.
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10% might be worth it, but it can turn out that the daily fines end up burning Microsoft badly.
Others have called for a ban on Windows (or perhaps just Explorer?), which would be much more drastic and rather un-EU-like I think.
Re:I don't understand why they're doing this (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring a court ruling would land most people in jail for contempt of court. I think the EU should start fining corporations percentage of revenues for contempt of court (a billion is a start, but it should be higher if it has to have any effect on microsoft)
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They swore under oath that they were complying with the order when they were not.
This is especially stupid of Microsoft considering that when they swore under oath that they were having problems complying with the order the court basically said, no problem let us know when you will be in compliance.
So the real issue is the sworn statements under penalty of perjury that they were complying when they were not. I would not hire Microsofts attorneys unless I needed some crack disposed of.
Re:I don't understand why they're doing this (Score:5, Insightful)
A billion dollars for a browser choice dialouge? It is beyond my comphrension how this could be considered rational or acceptable in any way.
It's proportional to the company profits. All the big number means is that Microsoft earns a lot of money.
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You're confusing fines and damages. Fines are a punition and are part of criminal law, damages are for reparation of prejudice and part of civil law.
They follow different rules. No general principle of law exists that forbids fines to be adjusted to the means of the condemned.
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The fine is set so high because Microsoft repeatedly and willingly ignores what the EU tells them to do, not because what Microsoft is doing wrong is worth a billion.
If you keep parking your car in a no-parking zone and just pay the low fines because you can afford them at some point the police will just impound your car and haul you in front of a judge. This is the corporate equivalent.
Re:I don't understand why they're doing this (Score:5, Interesting)
Well the point of the fine is to make it economically adventageous for Microsoft to follow the law. Suppose that they were expecting to benefit by $250M (through network effects of having a larger market share, &c) by having 28 million people running IE by default instead of being given a choice. And suppose they thought there was a 50% chance they'd just get away with it. Ignoring morality or commitment to rule of law or anything like that, and looking only at money, what's the rational decision for the following fine amounts?
Given the size of Microsoft, and the potential benefit they get from breaking the law, a "rational" fine is one big enough to make it "rational" for MS not to play games with the EU anymore.
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A billion dollars for a browser choice dialouge? It is beyond my comphrension how this could be considered rational or acceptable in any way.
The browser choice thing is one of many possible solutions for the underlying problem that is anti-competitive behaviour.
This anti-competitive behaviour was largely (though not solely) responsible for the downfall of Netscape.
Whether that is worth a billion dollar is a different matter.
It's notable that neither iOS nor Android has been subject to such regulation, despite both claiming to have the type of marketshare Microsoft had at the time.
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Neither Android, nor iOS has 90+% of the smart phone market. And that's the point, there is actual competition at work between the 2 platforms, so you can't state that either one has a monopoly on smart phones. As such it's impossible for either one to abuse a monopoly position as Microsoft has been convicted of doing.
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You can ship the screen in the code, but if you never show it to users what good is it then?
How long did it take the EU bureacracy to discover that the browser choice screen was missing on some systems? A year? Two years? Did anyone outside the bureacracy give a damn one way or the other?
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No, and if Microsoft has said "Sorry, but there are technical problems complying with the law with our new operating system, we need more time to come into compliance." The EU bureacracy probably would have just said something like "OK, let us know when you are back in compliance so we can restart the clock on the consent decree."
Instead Microsoft lied under oath about being in compliance. With the predictable results.
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It didn't ship for 17 months (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/17/microsoft_ec_browser_choice_fresh_investigation/
So 28 million Windows went out without the choice, and Microsoft got away with it for 17 months. I don't see why you have difficulty understanding it, it all seems pretty simple to me. It's not like they can claim ignorance, they were told by their competitors it wasn't showing the browser choice and they chose to 'investigate' it for a heck of a long time before finally fixing it when Brussels became involved.
It's just Microsoft being Microsoft, they'll never change, just hit them with a big fat non-compliance fooling-nobody fine and move on till the next time (which will be the 3rd time) they do it.
Looks like 100 million units (Score:2, Informative)
I made the mistake of taking that 28 million at face value, but that number comes from Microsoft wishing to downplay what it did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
"On March 4, 2010, Microsoft announced that it had sold more than 90 million Windows 7 licenses.", so when SP1 was introduced it was 90 million.
"On July 12, 2011, the sales figure was refined to over 400 million end-user licenses and business installations"
So when they fixed it they'd shipped 400 million.
So 310 million windows were shipped, an
Re:Looks like 100 million units (Score:4, Informative)
The bug was that if you didn't see the choice screen before installing SP1, you would never see it. Most of those 400 million were sold with the original Windows 7 with no service pack, and got the choice screen as soon as they clicked the blue e.
Re:I don't understand why they're doing this (Score:4, Informative)
I don't understand why they're doing this. There has been a browser choice screen shipped with it and via windows update for ages now. It stinks of profitteering on the part of the EU. You don't hear them suing the crap out of pharmaceutical companies for a monopoly either.
Here's a little back ground
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case [wikipedia.org]
Re:I don't understand why they're doing this (Score:5, Interesting)
If you had read the fucking article, you would have seen that MS admits the breach anyway: "The company acknowledged its mistake in July, saying it was now distributing software with the browser option and also offered to extend the compliance period for an additional 15 months."
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Oh really? Perhaps you should start reading news from other sources than the spoonfed 'merican sources.
The EU are more than happy to sue the crap out of anyone who breaks the law, whether it's a local company or foreign megacorp. Also, it's not about profitteering, it's about protecting the consumers and competition, both locally and globally - 1 billion euro is nothing, it's a drop in the bucket when you deal with economics of the EU scale - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece [wikipedia.org] Greeze owes more t
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I can't think of any pharmaceutical companies abusing a monopoly (e.g. you can only swallow our pills with our own brand bottled water) which is probably why they're not in trouble.
The problem that Microsoft itself acknowledged is that the browser choice screen wasn't being displayed in compliance with the 2009 ruling. What don't you understand?
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Think you need to look in your own backyard (Score:2)
They need the money to bailout Spain...
You would think America would get Apple;Google and Microsoft to pay tax hitting $16 trillion
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This is slashdot
Ahh thank you sir for pointing that out, I could have been thinking I was looking at gmail or something like that
Some people are really helpful, last time I was about to watch a show, and a guy went completely out of his way, he almost killed himself just to tell me that "It's...." but then the flying circus jingle started
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How do you figure? Microsoft clearly violated the terms of the ruling, which resulted in a fine. Are you objecting to
a) the court's interpretation of the law?
b) the anti-monopoly laws in effect in the EU?
c) anti-monopoly laws in general?
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Or:
Multiple-convicted monopolist company with assets on a par with the entire EU annual budget, seeks to avoid legal redress by failing to implement agreed-to legal measures (or only implementing them half-assedly) and claim they didn't know, nor bother to check, they were working for several YEARS, after already being fined half a billion Euros and made to implement those measures in the first place (after ANY NUMBER of appeals and legal arguments failed because the evidence was just so overwhelming).
It's
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Problem is, they're used to doing business in the USA where if you don't like the law you buy a few politicians. This whole idea in the EU of a justice system and having to follow it's decisions is just too foreign a concept for them.
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You're wasting your time. You're talking about people who are too stupid to download Firefox or Chrome without government involvement.
Hint: The answers are all no (Score:3)
So you are saying they don't have to run a major attack vector just so that they can avoid running a major attack vector? What about when they want to keep their computer secure by using Windows Update; can they avoid using Internet Explorer by using Chrome or Firefox? Can they simply uninstall IE so they it won't run against their wishes at various times? Can they stop
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I'm confused why Apple isn't being sued for the exact same kind of behaviour with their products and ecosystem.
Because Microsoft has a monopoly on desktop OSes, something like 90%. Apple has no monopoly in any space, for every iPhone sold, there are two Android phones sold. If MS did this with phones they'd be off the hook, because they have no monopoly in that market.
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Nobody, not one person, initiated complaints in the "plain text editor", "basic bitmap editor", "calculator" software categories that were proven in a court of law to be a monopolistic misuse of power to ensure that ONLY their calculator/whatever dominated the market for years.
And the "real" Office suite is an entirely separate (and therefore optional) product.
Which is lucky because if MS were sued by every software manufacturer whose market they had manipulated contrary to anti-monopoly laws, there'd be an
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Because the other applications (Notepad, Paint, etc) are minimally functional compared to their competition, they don't have massive market share compared the competition (partially for the same reason) and you're not forced to use Paint to get hold of a copy of Photoshop.
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As a EU citizen I think the EU should stop bothering MS over this browser selectionscreen, otherwise they should also go after Apple for not providing the same option for iOS and MacOSX. MS has already payed enough, and letting 'dumb' users decide which browser to use is one of the most moronic things to do as they have no clue as to which browser is better (they all have their positives and negatives), they propably will select the one that has the nicest icon or name... Stop wasting EU tax money on such stupid things...
Ignoring the EU citizen bit. I personally believe. The EU should have been more vigilant in preventing the Monopoly happening in the first place. The sanction should not be money, but replacing IE as an option from the slection screen :).
I hate eliteist comments like yours attacking moronic(sic) users. The selection screen is a useful way of quickly informing users about the choices available to them.
Microsoft should obviously be penalised for it failing to comply with the 2009 ruling, but the EU should al
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Monopolies are held to a different standard than their minuscule competitors.
They would not "pull licenses" to their customers just because "the EU" is being nasty to them. The licenses have been granted to companies and individuals that have no say in the matter, so why should they be punished?
And where would they sue, anyway? In the European courts where they no longer would be welcome? Microsoft is a legal entity that only exists as a fiat of law: They have no rights other than those granted to them by G
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. If Microsoft were as utterly stupid as you indicate, Europe would just revoke Microsoft's copyright - a Government-granted monopoly, remember - and put Windows into the public domain there, thus making the "illegal" use legal.
If the EU actually wanted to hurt Microsoft they would enforce those copyrights as harshly as possibly. Microsoft may want to get paid for every copy of windows, but they'd still rather you use a pirated copy of windows than a different OS altogether. If the people in the EU woke up and realized they could function without windows, the rest of the world might find out too, and then microsoft would be in real trouble.
Unfortunately I know that the EU would never consider actually banning windows, and of cours
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