Microsoft loses EU antitrust case
Microsoft has suffered a blow with the ruling from the CFI. It still stands a chance though, as a final appeal is likely.
The Court of First Instance has upheld an earlier ruling by the European Commission that Microsoft has abused its market position to keep competitors out of the way. The courts ruled that Microsoft will have to pay the £345 million fine, disclose interoperability information, and offer a Windows Media Player-less version of its Windows operating system.
The CFI did throw out the earlier decision that an independent trustee would monitor the implementation of the ruling.
This case will set a precedent on how the EU will proceed against other foreign companies that it deems as a monopoly. Now a company can be legally charged and fined if the courts find that they have violated antitrust laws. Intel has probably been watching this case with close scrutiny, as it's likely the next company to head into the European court system over antitrust issues.
Microsoft still has one chance left to win the case, as the company will be able to take an appeal to the European Court of Justice for one final decision. By the time it reaches that far though, everything that the case is about could be null and void for the company. Both Apple and a variety of Linux flavours have made large strides into the OS market and have been slowly chipping away at Microsoft's market share.
Jumping for joy like many members of the EU Competition Commission? Let us know your thoughts on the latest case ruling over in the forums or in the comment section below.
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9 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyAdding functionality to your product is just plain old good business practice, should we sue Volvo for adding seatbelts to their cars?
Microsoft do not force you into using their media player, email client, internet browser or even windows explorer, they are built in applications that you as the consumer have the choice of using.
This is much different to the Intel case, where they used unfair business practices to push out the competition.
Unfortunately the media and the pressure group(s) (is there more than one?) who faught for this havan't taken into account what affect this will have for the end user. All they say is that we're going to have more choice. I disagree. In my mind the outcome is going to be higher software costs and more delay for releases in Europe. I will put money on the fact if Microsoft do remove WMP (for example) from Windows over here, then they'll just replace it with a link to download a copy. 99% of normal users then just downloading it. All the people who care already use Firefox or Foobar etc etc.
i don't understand why the judge rules, but nothing happens......... am i missing something?
And whose fault is that?
The 'competition' don't exactly provide much to compete with Windows, there isn't much of an alternative - At least not a widely useful one.
I can never understand why being the dominant force in a market immediately makes it fair-game to accuse a company of monopoly. Offering a more fleshed-out, comprehensive and compatible product doesn't seem like unfair practice to me.
On the point of Inter-operability.. Don't network administrators like to keep things as simple as possible in a typical business network? Using uniform DELL/HP systems of similar spec, bought in bulk; and a whole network running as few different operating systems as possible, with a uniform management system like Novell ZENworks etc?
I'd imagine Windows interoperates just fine with *NIX in a network environment and I can't imagine many SysAdmins being eager to install a variety of OSes on a business network just for the spice of life..
Maybe I'm missing the point, but the way I see it is that if the competition can't engineer their software to work with the already market-dominant systems provided by Microsoft, without Microsoft making it easy for them, then they're in the wrong market.
If you can't offer a better product and market it sufficiently well, then you lose - Handicapping the market leader as if it were a game of golf doesn't seem right to me in capitalist business.
If it benefits the consumer, then great, but I can't see it making much difference except to set another legal precedent.
Another question. Does Apple provide a browser, media player ect with its OS? If it does then surely thats unfair too.
If MS is forced to evolve its products it benefits every one (inc MS) IE7 only came out becuase FF started to erode its position MS would have continued onwards with the security time bomb that was IE6 for ever if there was no real competition, which of course there isn't since it wiped it out.