EU Regulators Open New Microsoft Investigations

The New York Times is reporting on two new investigations into Microsoft business practices opened by EU antitrust regulators. The new cases center on the company's positioning of Office and Internet Explorer, and were apparently partially prompted by Microsoft's earlier heel-dragging. "'It would have been preferable if these issues could have been resolved amicably with Microsoft,' said Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for the European competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes. 'But that has not proved to be the case. Therefore we have opened these formal investigations. That does not prove there is a violation. We will only be able to come to a conclusion after investigations.' The legal battle that ended last year involved the bundling of a media player with Windows and the availability of information required to make rival software operate smoothly with Microsoft products. In September, the Court of First Instance, Europe's highest after the European Court of Justice, endorsed the commission's 2004 decision to impose record fines on Microsoft."

Re:MS pulls out of EU

[Mantaar]

Orly?

Are you just joking, or a complete nutjob? I assume it's the former, just for the sake of sanity.

Inhabitants of the EU: 494.8, Millions, that is. Way more than Kentucky. Way more than the US, actually. Over half of the households in Europe are actually using computers. That's one hell of a market, if you ask me. MS can't, just can't afford to lose that market. And it's not only about the numbers - the European market is very innovative, many software companies are producing - well... software. Imagine if their environment wouldn't mostly use Windows as its main OS?

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_statistics [wikipedia.org]
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90781/90877/6314195.html [peopledaily.com.cn]

Re:The only way to fight bundling...

[calebt3]

The OEM can put EXEs of whatever browsers they want on the desktop. Or at the very least they can install the browser that they want to without asking MS.

Re:The only way to fight bundling...

[Tom]

Education matters little.

Even if the average user knows there are alternatives, it is additional work, he is insecure, and MS works hard to make it as inconvenient as possible.

More importantly, corporate IT departments are very reluctant to install any additional software if there is already software of the same kind. They'll support one browser, one office suite, one media player. Guess which ones. Not because those are better, but because those are pre-installed and they have to support them anyways.

Re:The only way to fight bundling...

[bmartin]

If I had to guess, I'd say that MS probably offers incentives to companies to *not* have them install another browser or media player, or it might be in their OEM/vendor agreement (which would be a pretty clear exploit of monopoly, IMHO). Otherwise, we surely would have seen another browser installed by default by now.

I've never seen a Windows-based computer come with more a non-MS browser or non-MS media player... unless you count preinstalled AOL.

Re:The only way to fight bundling...

[el americano]

The argument that Microsoft's inclusion of functionality with Windows discourages third parties from making such functionality implies a far different view of OS and applications that is present in the market.

The problem is that users and, more importantly, OEMs should be able to remove the included versions without negative consequences. Given that windows update requires IE, I'd say Opera and Firefox don't have a level playing field. There is also the issue of releasing full specifications and giving the built-in apps preferred access to the OS.