EU Official Labels Microsoft's Behavior Unacceptable 290
InfoWorldMike writes "EU commissioner Neelie Kroes has lashed out at Microsoft in comments to European parliamentarians Thursday, saying it is 'unacceptable' that the company continues to gain market share using tactics that were outlawed in the Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against the software vendor. 'Three years later Microsoft still hasn't complied with the main demand imposed by the European antitrust ruling: that the company share interoperability information inside Windows at a reasonable price to allow rival makers of workgroup servers to build products that work properly with PCs running Windows.'"
Yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Since it has been 3 years and MS has not complied, it is obvious to me that EU will not really be cracking down.
I may not like BG but you have to admire him. He knows how to run circles around govs.
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Why bother charging them 5 times the sales, let's just charge them 5 quantapentillion! Is this a real number? No. Does it matter? No.
Re:I have to laugh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have to laugh (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that them being "lawful" means, among other things, dumping the media player from Windows, which hurts the users of the OS (I prefer to have a standard media player in Windows, and I don't want to download it additionally. I prefer my apps to rely on the OS having video display capabilities built-in versus having to pack a full media player with each of my media apps for ex.).
How does it hurt the user of the OS since the PC builder will just put one on before they sell it? The idea is that if WMP is already on there it acts as a disincentive to install any other media player (since that's extra work). I'm not arguing for or against the remedy I just get tired of reading this fallacy on here.
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Flash is a media player with larger userbase than WM. Explain that (yea it's cross platform and that's part of the reason, that said 98% of Windows users have it). Apparently the fallacy is f
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If formatting was of utmost importance, we wouldn't be typing all tags by hand. Slashdot, it's not 1995 anymore, how about fixing the damn editor, huh?
the only penalty that will work is block 'em. (Score:4, Funny)
nothing else will get their attention.
old joke revisited... steve jobs dies and is waiting at the pearly gates. long line. suddenly, with a rush of clouds and chorus of angelic voices, a chair goes skidding across the horizon, and A Power rushes by and through the gates without slowing down.
"hey, what's the big idea?" says jobs.
"Oh, that's God," says St. Peter. "Every once in a while, he thinks he's steve ballmer of microsoft."
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Re:Yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
They can if it enables them to make two billion dollars (or whatever) that they otherwise would not be able to make. Microsoft's entire business model depends on vendor lock-in, and keeping these formats private and secret is part of that.
If you could flawlessly migrate all of your Microsoft Office documents to OO.o formats today, then huge numbers of people would leave microsoft office tomorrow; they'd be leaving Windows shortly thereafter. The vast majority of people working with computers use office, a web browser, and an email client, and very little else. It would be cheaper in every way to put them on Linux with OO.o; TCO is probably approximately the same, though somewhat higher for Windows due to cleaning up malware (which in an organization with any significant number of computers requires quite a bit of time) but is vastly cheaper up-front. Priced Vista+Office lately?
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The issue is that Vista forces you to buy a new system in most cases, and if you don't, you're spending as much money on software licensing as if you were buying a new machine!
The latest Linux-distribut
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Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed, the French provide a valuable service. They let us know when is the best time to surrender..... This would be great, except for they ALWAYS tell us to surrender.
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Real Networks has a strong lobby there. They tried in US, but US finally ruled in favor of Microsoft. Real Networks is who started the whole deal in EU. I for side with Microsoft regarding the Windows Media case.
It's not as if Real Networks will produce anything worthwhile never mind what information they have access to.
Re:Sigh. (Score:4, Informative)
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This has been another round of surprising answers to obvious questions. Thanks for reading.
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Bush followed SOP, namely, replacing many prosecutors as he entered office. Later, years later, he fired prosecutors for investigating corrupt Republicans and for refusing to investigate obviously fabricated allegations against Democrats. The difference is not hard to comprehend.
Nice try. Play again?
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...and why isn't Europe actually standing up to them? It's all well and good to say, "Your behavior is unacceptable!" but what is going to happen when Microsoft asks, "What are you going to do about it?"
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You call this -standing up-? (Score:2)
Which is to say: they've issued several strongly worded complaints.
Calling the bully a bully and saying that you're going to stand up to him is great and all.
But that's not quite the same as actually standing up.
If all you're looking for is strongly worded complaints and empty fines which effect no change, then the US has done its part.
Two reasons: gutless and clueless (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of the world, except the EU (it seems) doesn't really care because they are too primitive to to realize that being dependent on a single US company is a problem.
The funny thing is that the EU has a very simple solution to the MS problem; simply fine MS 10000 EUR / day / undocumented protocol identified and use the resulting money hire 10-20 hackers pr. protocol to reverse engineer it and publish the docs.
Anyone should be allowed to submit protocols, if MS has implemented both a server and a client then it needs to be documented.
Ideally this principle should extend to other areas as well, there are tons of secret protocols that do nothing more than serve as a weapon of vendor lockin.
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Either primitive doesn't mean what you think it means, the EU is smaller than you think it is, or your world view is smaller than a typical American. You think Australia is primitive? Japan? Canada?
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(Microsoft tends to lag in standards, so I'm sure they're blowing off the Euro as "wasteful fluff" for the time being)
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You are trying to be funny, aren't you ?
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Isn't that mostly recipes that originated from other countries, but deep fried?
Re:Sigh. or how do you measure success (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm. I'll just ignore all the medical genetics, biochemistry, and biotech labs running Mandriva and SuSe then, shall I?
OK if I take back those HIV vaccines from the world and the genome sequences that Cambridge did, too? And you don't need those heart medications for your cloned beef
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Care to back any of that up?
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Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
European countries use Windows for the same reason Americans do: MS rode the wave of personal computing and then began setting up illegal business deals to catapult itself into a monopoly position. They use Windows for the same reason you use Canadian, Venezualan, and OPEC oil: you have to. OTOH, they are taking the lead in moving away from Windows unlike many of their American counterparts.
Second, the Internet was NOT paid for by the USA. The current protocols were developed with DoD research dollars, but they were informed by experimental networks in Britian and elsewhere. The actual network hardware was purchased by them for their own networks, and for the most part that was all manufactured in Asia.
And BTW I am an American enrolled at a prominent Texas university in a top-tier engineering graduate program that has 90% international students.
Why does Motorola use an OS designed in Finland? (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU only wants to regulate the way US credit card companies deal with EU citizens.
Welcome to the global community. All the EU is saying is that a fair set of rules need to be put in place so that people don't get abused. What EU proposes against Microsoft would help US companies too, it is just that the US goverment lacks the balls to do this.
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I guess I must be hallucinating when I look at the Siemens DSL modem I have, and then the Alcatel DSL equipment that fills the remote terminal down the street. I'll also have to ignore the Nokia cell phone. There is a lot of tech that comes out of Europe, and much of it is better than the American tech it is competing with.
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Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
And although you claim that Europe ignored the tech industry for decades, they still have a larger broadband penetration rate, they have a superior electricity and telecommunications network and a lot of smart people and ideas come from a part of Europe (ok, a lot of them migrate to the US, including me but that has more to do with the European tax rates, which are killing to high salaried workers and a brain drain from US and Asian companies), look at Linus Torvalds, DVD Jon, The Pirate Bay, a lot of alternative energy 'inventions'...
Re:Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Tim Berners-Lee completely ignored technology when inventing the Web (whilst working at CERN [web.cern.ch]) preferring to use homing pigeons instead of a packet-switching network.
Just because the EC is taking a known monopolist to task--and going the right way about it--doesn't mean there is some sort of European conspiracy going on. Microsoft have got a massive percentage [web.cern.ch] (a bit out of date, can't seem to find anything current) of desktop market share and are using that to unfairly hamper competition. They use bundling and their API to stop people from developing for other platforms. They put the brakes on IE for as long as possible because they realised their API was (and still is) threatened [joelonsoftware.com] by web based applications.
Unfortunately the US government failed to prosecute Microsoft fully [oreillynet.com] so the EC are being forced to do it. It's sad but quite simple.
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That's arguable. Europe funded DARPA, in other words, it's as responsible for the Internet as much as the United States is.
Europe virtually ignored the tech industry for decades...
On the contrary, I don't know what happened in the other European countries, but in France for instance -- they spent huge amounts of money on research, education, and IT infrastructure. In 1986 for example, it was already achieving a 95% pe
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
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Market Share (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Market Share (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly you need a competitive market for that to work, that's why we have competition laws. Secondly, this idea that free markets are some democratizing force is total bullshit.
HTH.
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While the hardware market is competitive (at least, we have Intel and AMD for now), the OS market is not. It's a virtual monopoly being exploited by its owner to create additional monopolies around it.
As for
Re:Market Share (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Americans also ruled that MS used unfair practices...
The US ruled Microsoft was "mean" to Netscape by giving away their browser to compete with Netscape's browser -- that Netscape also gave away. Never mind that the Netscape browser was a horrible piece of trash.
Meanwhile, no one in the modern world thinks a modern computer shouldn't have a browser, and it's a recognized standard part of any operating system -- and Microsoft was right all along.
Re:Market Share (Score:4, Informative)
It became free as an attempt to compete with MS's illegal monopoly practices.
Both browsers were a piece of crap then, but the is irrelevant to the discussion.
Using you monopoly power to destroy a competitor is illegal. The reason it is illegal is that it gives no chance of competition for the consumer to take advantage of. The fact that the consumer has no real option is why the consumer keeps buying the product. Hell, a consumer may not know that a company is abusing it's onopoly and that's why there is no, or very little competition. in other words, they don't know enough to not buy the product.
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MS starting giving away their browser to compete for Netscapes, whose browser was NOT FREE.
I think you are misremembering (not a criticism, thinks were fast and furious back then). Netscape would allow you to give them money if you really wanted to, but it was also a free download, and was also bundled everywhere. Netscape was definitely using the "give away the product and make up the difference in volume" Internet model.
Both browsers were a piece of crap then, but the is irrelevant to the discussio
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That trying to legislate a market for Microsoft's competitors is a waste of time?
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Microsoft is breaking the law.
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Microsoft is breaking the law.
Why is this so hard for certain people to understand?
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Re:Market Share (Score:5, Informative)
What's more, Microsoft has had 2 years to document it's protocols, and it claims it has 300 engineers are working "day and night" on the problem, but despite that, little documentation has been forthcoming, and what there has been, has been smothered under a layer of restrictive licenses and NDAs.
It seems to me that a company as large as Microsoft should have at least some idea of how its network protocols work, and if not, is capable of finding out. You'd have thought that a company that prides itself on technical innovation and "Developers developers developers" would know how to write technical documentation. So either Microsoft is entirely incompetent, or it's flaunting the law. Whilst the former is tempting to believe, Microsoft didn't get where it is today by being staffed by morons, and so one has to conclude that they're deliberately disobeying the law. Hence the fine. It's that simple.
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Why can't Sun do the same thing with servers on its own without government interference???
...well I'm not sure I agree with this argument. In the larger context of what happened, it seems to me you're argument goes something like:
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The Joke must be made (Score:5, Funny)
Heh (Score:2, Offtopic)
Not taking sides... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Something among the lines of "Microsoft Goes Bankrupt"?
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In order for siome company
Re:Not taking sides... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, it would be better (Score:2)
Plus, even though the users would complainghn, that is lost revenue.
OTOH, a 20,000,000,000 dollar fine might get them to change their ways to.
I mean they gat a lot of cash, a measly 4 or 5 billion dollar fine will get them to argueabout it, and then pay it, and...not change a thing.
Re:Not taking sides... (Score:4, Insightful)
And believe it or not, if it actually were game over for MS in the EU, all that precious windos-only software would be ported to OSX, Linux, etc. in record time. The EU market is huge, larger than the US market. Any company producing software would make sure it's available in that market, windos or no windos.
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EU has one option that would be interesting (Score:2)
Essentially it would be legal to pirate MS products, and the only thing that MS could do in retaliation is drop their European support services. An EU-friendly corporation would immediatel
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What would happen is that MS copyrights would be invalidated, life would just continue and everyone would start porting their apps to another operating system. You'd be surprised how fast drop-in solutions would drop from the sky in notime. Two years later, most of the migration wo
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You US trolls still don't get it that the EU is the largest common market, bigger than the US market, do you? Walking away from a market that size is a suicide move for a company that relies on monopoly and lock-in for survival.
The Rule of Law? (Score:2, Insightful)
Next thing you know they'll fine them - again - for beaucoup Euros
Impossible? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Perhaps that is thr MS tactic. It might want to force the EU to drastic measures to get them to comply and then they can complain about how drastic the measures were. In practice it should be easy to comply. All they want is for MS to release protocols and APIs so that others can compete. Unfortunately if MS released them, it might spell then end of their servers as people find cheaper/more reliable/more secure alternatives to the
Im gonna go ecstatic at this rate ! (Score:5, Funny)
then "RIAA Caught in Tough Legal Situation",
after that "Judge Strikes Down COPA, 1998 Online Porn Law"
then "RIAA Balks At Complying With Document Order" and judge is not happy with it
then the story about nebraska university wanting reparations from riaa for wasting their time,
after that, nbc embraces internet revolution in "NBC, News Corp Join to Create YouTube Clone"
then as of now, "EU Official Labels Microsoft's Behavior Unacceptable"
if things and stories in slashdot goes like that im gonna quit sex and just read slashdot.
Re:Im gonna go ecstatic at this rate ! (Score:4, Funny)
sex AND slashdot?
you make funny
Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason is that people creating software for computers have the greatest number of opportunities if they make them windows compatible. And since making something cross-platform is a bitch, it's much easier to get 90% of the market by doing windows alone. And so that's what people and companies will do.
So we can either do one of two things
1) Force people to develop cross platform software and hardware (yeah right)
2) Create an operating system so much better that the majority adopts it (extremely unlikely, but better than "yeah right")
The only other thing I can think of is FORCE companies like Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony, IBM, Lenovo, Gateway etc to stop forcing Windows down our throats on computers we buy from them and sell the bare machine at a REDUCED price. I'm sure Microsoft is strong-arming some of them to some degree, but if we just flat out make it illegal to force-preload then they have little choice.
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All the big OEMs have marketing deals with Microsoft. And Network Associates (McAfee). And Google. And Symantec. And Adobe. Or did you think all of that crap they install was just to annoy you? No. The OEMs get paid for every piece of third-party "trial" software they install. That reduces the price of the machines, or at least increases their profits. The OEMs would lose money if they didn't ship Windows and all that crapware with every machine sold.
Which "Windows" (Score:2)
BILL G - Of course. Here's the code for Windows 98
JUDGE - Something more recent, perhaps?
BILL G - Windows 2000?
JUDGE - More recent, Mr. Gates
BILL G - Okay, okay. Windows XP, but that was the last OS covered under your judgement.
JUDGE - Sigh. Fair enough.
Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Never mind that they were bashing Microsoft just one news story below and complaining how monopolistic and evil Microsoft is
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Entropy & the Borg (Score:2, Interesting)
Steve Balmer is in Denmark end of April... (Score:2, Insightful)
EU's Behavior Unnacceptable (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I can't believe I am saying this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is this free world and what do you call it when the US uses the WTO to dictate trade policy for the rest of the world?
Microsoft are free to stop breaking the law anytime they please.
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Mod Parent Up (Score:2, Insightful)
Europe seems to be viciously attacking most American(Capitalist) software companies - Google, Microsoft, and Apple have all three had suits brought against them. Every last one has lost, too. After a point, I wonder if they're really preventing monopolistic practices are just preventing competition altogether.
USA/EU corporate style (Score:2)
It's difficult to imagine how the EU would prevent competition altogether if they fine corporations for anti-competitive behaviour.
The notion that *only* USA companies would be sued for that is totally bogus and plainly untrue. It may be that USA-ones *seem* to happen more because:
1)It gets a higher profile when one is sued, because they make more fuss about it (together with the 'look, i
Re:USA/EU corporate style (Score:5, Informative)
1)It gets a higher profile when one is sued, because they make more fuss about it (together with the 'look, it's the EU against USA' attitude)
2)USA corporations are more prone to anti-competitive behaviour (maybe due to the inherent strong corporatism in the USA where one easily buys politicians)
3)EU-corporations are as bad as USA ones, only they can cover it up better
You're very close with number 1, but the biggest reasons (IMHO) are:
1) US news only reports when the EU fines a US company.
2) Slashdot only reports when the EU fines an IT company and most of them are from the US.
For those who truly feel that the EU is specifically after US companies: do some searching on European news outlets on companies fined by the EU for anti-competitive behavior. Many, if not most of them, are from the EU itself. For instance, in the past year Siemens (German) has been fined 397 million euros, Akzo Nobel (Dutch) has been fined 25.2 million euros, Solvay (Belgian) 167 million euros, Total (French) 78.6 million euros, Edison (Italian) 58.1 million euros.
And those are just from the first 2 cases I found on a quick search. Hardly a month goes by that I don't read about another big case.
Sources (in Dutch):
http://www.nu.nl/news/955922/32/rss/EU-boete_druk
http://www.nu.nl/news/725210/32/rss/Akzo_krijgt_k
Disclaimer: I am not a European (Score:2, Insightful)
If MS wants to sell to Europe, then they have to deal with European laws. Unless you think that a corporation should be above the law.
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uhhh, because they're one too? (Score:2)
kinda like country governments and boundaries are ginned up out of whole cloth.
they are all artifices of man's invention.
you don't obey one, why obey any? that's where MS is at.
nobody's stopped MS from disobeying the law (Score:2)
is the EU going to do something useful, or just yap and whine?
and will MS do anything except spit unless they have a market shut on them for monopolizing it?
MS has basically entered gutless consent agreements ("we plead to nothing, but here's a bag of cash to spread around,") in the US and done zippo in the EU. the US smiled, and the EU is still whining after three years.
so it surely looks like MS doesn't follow the law here. so should Oracle, or HN Bull, or EADS/
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That's OK, you can get it for free [wikipedia.org].
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DO you want a government where one man can 'take action' on anything he choses any time he/she chooses?
Now, other politicians will way the words and political situation. Maybe nothing will happen, maybe uit will get into a comittee. (Not familiar with EU government system.)
Re:I'm far from anti-European but this guy is a bo (Score:5, Interesting)