Microsoft will be in a familiar position tomorrow when it stands before a European Grand Chamber of the Court of First Instance, where the special 13-judge tribunal will be issuing its final verdict in an antitrust case that has been dragging on since long after the software giant finished its controversial little dance with the Department of Justice here in the US. According to Reuters, the five-point ruling will be handed down in Brussels on live TV at 3.30AM EDT, and will determine the validity of the European Commission's 2004 decision against Redmond on issues of bundling and interoperability as well as the subsequent sanctions that have totaled
hundreds of millions of dollars to date. The best case scenario for Microsoft would see the court overturning the underlying decisions -- automatically canceling the sanctions -- while the EU obviously hopes that its rulings and penalties will be upheld, effectively giving it a mandate to press for even more concessions along with increased leverage against other non-compliant companies. We'll have the decision for you immediately after it's released, so set your alarms folks....
posted September 16th 2007 1:07PM
this is such a freaking stupid case it boggles my mind. and all you ms haters come out of the wordwork to post nonsense about DRM and why ms is evil? come on people. all microsoft did was put THEIR OWN windows media player and internet explorer in the operating system by default.
by that logic apple should be sued out the ass for anti trust for putting safari and itunes in os 10 as well.
understand the case before you bash ms for no reason.
I agree, there's nothing wrong with them doing that, besides the fact internet explorer is garbage. it's a nightmare if you've ever tried to write css for... it follows no rules at all.
I think most people are angry because they just want the damn thing gone..
no ones attacking apple, because while safari isn't great, it's also not the scurvy of the browser world.
no ones attacking ms for including a file browser. a calculator.. etc. they're attacking them for the stuff that makes them rip their hair out.
shut up kenpo... while IE might be a horrible browser, it's still something that I find mighty handy for downloading firefox. And WMP is mighty useful for playing videos (after CCCP is installed, at least). But, I guess Microsoft could remove the media player and web browser, and then the EU could go back to using AOL install CDs when they want to get a browser on their machine. Really, this is such a damn nonissue it's not even funny.
I use 5 Operating Systems. I love them all in their own ways. Windows XP, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris for work. I guess ScoViz for work also.
I don't know if it's just me, but Microsoft doesn't seem as bad as they were in the 90's early 2000's.
Now that competition has stepped up, and more and more new things are coming up in tech, Microsoft doesn't seem to be the "we'll just let our marketshare run our profits" kind of guy.
I think they're trying - slowly, but they are.
I'm thinking maybe Microsoft has learned from it's mistakes and maybe they'll actually work at being a better company. Making some nice and better pieces of hardware and software. I'm the guy that tries to see the good in things, rather than the evil.
Not all their products/services are bad, or people wouldn't use it.
So maybe Microsoft is changing for the better. I hope they keep it that way.
Congratulations. You've fallen for the viral marketing too. You actually think all the bad things about every company you read and all the good about MS is true?
Sounds a little dicey to me, but leave everything to microsoft, lol.
http://annglobalenterprise.com
I hope they kill Microsoft.
Should Microsoft lose they should issue a virus that will shut down all Euro versions of Windows.
I hope MS is pounded
PeE.U!!
I hope they don't get charged for bundling software. Apple have been doing this recently and not only that but they enforce the AAC codec and other 'exclusive to apple' standards as well as refusing third party programs on the iPhone. I can't think of more but I'm sure there is, Apple seem to have skipped the radar in this respect by offering somewhat simple and half-decent solutions in the way of GUI design, but really, choosing Apple over Microsoft is just a choice between two evils.
Interesting article on this here. Doesn't seem particularly well written or unbiased, but makes some good points.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136949-c,companynews/article.html
mfed3, just read on.
Yess, Apple is monopolistic too. But it has no over 90% market share - in the PC segment, which is important for all kind of businesses.
Apple has over 80% marketshare in mediaplayers and in de US only, which is only one of the businesses.
Therefore Apple has no importance in Europe. Businesses In Europe don't depend of Apple.
The case here is ridiculous, and so european. They punish MS for its monopolistic behaviour, but legally they could catch it only for the default browser an media player. So, eurocrats should lie, and defend an ugly, uninnovative, agressive company: RealMedia. Just install RealPlayer to see.
I would like to know if the EU asked Microsoft to provide a version that doesn't come bundled or provides more options on what will be installed. Is it Microsoft's responsibility to anticipate the demands of the EU? If there were no other options out there, I might be able to understand why, but there are. If you don't like it... DON'T BUY IT EU. They would understand this if they understood how a market economy worked. If they refused to buy Microsoft, I bet that Microsoft would bend over backwards to accommodate them, Europe is a big market.