With last week’s failure to agree on a settlement, the European Union is set to rule in the Microsoft antitrust case Wednesday. It’s likely to impose a massive fine and demand concessions from the software maker. European regulators plan to levy a record fine of more than $600 million against Microsoft as part of a strongly worded rebuke of the company’s business practices.
EU planning massive fine against Microsoft
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heh yeah, 600mill. I see it now, Bill Gates opens wallet and says “you have change for a billion I dont carry small bills” rely now, 600mill even 1billion is nothing to microsoft. well it is but not enough for them to worry much about.
Whilst being a monopoly is’nt actually illegal, how you become and stay a monopoly can be subjected to scrutiny. Obviously the EU has seen bad form on the part of microsoft, and while this is a bit of a slap on the wrist on the grand scale of things, at least someone is trying to tame the giant.
I think I read M$ has around 50 billion dollars set aside for such lawsuits…oh well…
I was kind of thinking the same thing, just how much is $600 million for Microsoft? $1 billion would be a fortyth of their value, so what would $600 million be? I’m not a Microsoft hater or lover, but is a monetary fine really going to solve the differences between Microsoft and the EU?
We already had these great discussions about wether this is justiied or not, but i’m wondering about something else: what’ll be done with this money? What normally happens with such money? I’d say the prosecutors get it which would be Real and Apple. Right?
That is a very little fine when you consider the market size. The fine is one thing, but what does consumer that did not have what they should get in that? nothing. M$ should be tell to refund all the windows OS to those that request it since they started to be bully.
Next you have the punitive effect, what is 600M for M$, nothing. It mean that is you can make an empire that bring billion/year out of a practive that cost only around 60M/year it’s worth it.
As a funny thing, 600M is what i expected M$ to be forced to give to Be inc if the Be lawyer would have make is job. Instead i suspect it did go to be paid in stock as the thing is still secret and no shareholder got anything yet. Quite weird as M$ is not going up since the settlement, meaning they don’t want to cash out right now.
I expect the EU decision a lot because i have yet to abandon the idea to bring M$ on trial on a personal level, and this bring credibility to all who want to do the same as me.
The monetary fine isn’t the point here. Offering 2 versions of Windows in Europe will have an effect, but they already have a good grip on desktops. MS is after severs right now, and they are being forceed to license information to make competitors server work better with Windows deskops. That’s hitting them harder than the money.
” What normally happens with such money? I’d say the prosecutors get it which would be Real and Apple. Right? ”
The prosecutor in this case is the EU itself, so the money will go to the EU. Real and Apple are free to pursue their own prosecutions, and the result of this case has set a precedent which would encourage them to do so.
The thing that surprises me about this issue is that, most likely, both the EU and US goverments uses windows…
just a thought…
how many slaps on the wrist the EU is willing to dish out and Microsoft is willing to take. The money combined with the bad publicity may change MS’s behavior in the long run. I think this punishment is more enforceable than other choices. And it redresses the abuses in the media player market, while reducing MS’s ability to use their monopoly to conquer the server and other markets. I don’t think it’s quite fair going forward. I think MS should be allowed to put anything they want into their OS, but the same opportunity should be afforded other software makers through OEMs and resellers.
MS did wrong, make them pay.
the US government was so whimpy. I am absolutely sure it had nothing to do with those large campaign contributions to the bush camp, nothing i tell you.
Go EU. Give it too them.
I wonder if this all isn’t just a sign of the reemergence of Solaris use across Europe. I have heard that Sun and SPARC have been successful there for years.
// dell puts musicmatch on its PCs
hp, ibm, gateway, sony, palm, siemens, fujitsu, toshiba, panasonic all can use whatever they want as media players
other PC vendors can put whatever software they wish on their machines once they work out deals with software companies //
And Microsoft fines them for every non-MS product they bundle. That is one of the things Sony was suing MS over. When people like Dell or Sony work out an OEM contract with MS, the terms state that the money they will be charged is based on Windows and all MS’s software packages being there and are the default. For every change the OEM makes, MS adds an amount onto how much the OEM is charged per copy.
So, they’ll get a fine and they will go on their happy way. How does this fix anything?
“And Microsoft fines them for every non-MS product they bundle. That is one of the things Sony was suing MS over. When people like Dell or Sony work out an OEM contract with MS, the terms state that the money they will be charged is based on Windows and all MS’s software packages being there and are the default. For every change the OEM makes, MS adds an amount onto how much the OEM is charged per copy.”
and apple forces resellers to sell at only certain price points
and sun and ibm and whoever all have restraints on their partners
guess what, if you wanna sell my product to make a living i have some say so as to how you do it.
period. govt has no place deciding what an open market can or cannot do at this level.
so dell pays .20 more per copy of windows to not make wmp the default
and musicmatch pays dell .30 per copy to add musicmatch to default so that folks will later buy premium version for 19.99.
damn sue musicmatch for leading us along like cattle!
wonder how much of a fine hp will pay for going with apples itunes music store?
get real.
When you can be cut off at every turn by the huge overbearing corporation that controls well over 90% of the field, it’s not really an open market.
Microsoft is a monopoly – so the rules are different for them, in order to protect everyone else.
Microsoft never forced anybody to buy their software or maybe the tinfoil hats of the RMS cult weren’t working and the evil mind-control rays of Gates and Co. penetrated them and forced them to buy windows.
If you want to buy an x86 computer, not parts to build your own, you are forced to buy Windows. Even if you don’t get Windows installed you still have to pay for it as the OEM’s have to buy a Windows licence for every machine they produce. This was one of the monopoly abuses that came out in the original US trial.
do some research and wake up.
Great. Bigger the better! But will it achieve anything useful?
Anon. You are dead on the button. If you want to buy a new PC or especially a laptop it is VERY difficult to buy anything that doesn’t come with MS stuff, so in effect you pay them if you don’t want the shit O/S.
Yeah I know you can build your own. Buy a MAC, even buy a Linux PC, but if you are talking about walking into the nearest pc seller and buying a new machine, it is almost 100% guaranteed to have that O/S in some flavour on it – whether you like it or not.
That has to change.
That’s not all, the best part if you ask me is that they have to give competitors more information to allow them to interoperate.
“It’s a dent in quarterly earnings,” said Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff. “It’s not going to significantly affect Microsoft’s future business.”
The fine, Rosoff noted, is less than the $750 million that Microsoft agreed to pay AOL Time Warner (now renamed Time Warner) last year to settle that company’s private antitrust suit.
Unless the EU has something else up its sleeve, this punishment is as laughable as the one levied against microsoft from the US DOJ.
foo
tvrg
Can’t see that working either. ms giving competitors more info to allow them to interoperate. Fine ideal, but they will do what they have always done, there is plenty of evidence of that having happened over the past 10 years alone.
The EU ruling will have no consequence, the so called massive fine, will not have to be paid straight away. All this is good for is Socialist salaries to keep this committee or that committee going and paying large salaries. Oh lets not forget the fat lawyer salaries too.
Its simple to get ms to tow the line. You fine them very big, shall we say 1 billion dollars, with no time allowed to dilly dally over payment and appeals and all that crap.
Then you say in any country, after the date of this fine, where you have a market share of over 70% there will be a yearly “charge”, call it what you will. I say this should apply to ANY monopoly with a 90+% monopoly, to be paid at the beginning of each year and depending on the size of the monopoly and company the fee will be half a billion dollars.
I dont think this would work either… Forget the court rooms for get MPs…
the only way to change M$ is via ur pocket…
The endless opertunities there are out there for computers.. but most people think MS Office is the only major suite they need…
Word Processing makes M$ more money then M$ Windows and think of how many copies of M$ windows are sold because of Of£ice
If there are so many people out there that dont like MS products or and business actions, the only way including Home Users, Businesses, Governments And other Service providers.. to change the computing landscape is to vote with ur mind and cash…
<- just Pre-ordered Suse 9.1 Pro and Mandrake 10 Pro
Hyper you have a valid point also.
That is why I have purchased Slackware, Brilliant distro.
It is why I never bought any ms software. Always had Star Office or Word Perfect Office for my windows stuff. So I made my point years ago.
Normally the money goes to the fat lawyers and in the case of the Socialist EU, then of course there are mandarins salaries to pay. That’s why a massive fine is not the answer. It is a bit like the Russian show trials. Achieves nought except funding Politicians and Lawyers high lifes.
I think the only way is to limit a companies monopoly by percentage. When it gets over a certain amount say 70%, then its activities get heavily restricted.
Actually what “decisions” have actually been turned into valid actions by MS?
Of course as I said before you cannot seperate Politics and Monopolies.
In this case it is Socialism and Monopoly, the 2 man-made scourges of this earth, as evil as each other when left alone to fester and multiply.
MS has time on its side. The fine might annoy them but that’s about it. Besides, most people would hate to have to choose between Microsoft and something else, between Windows Media Player, Quicktime and Real because the amount of mind share they are willing to devote to computing is close to 0%.
So choosing and changing is out of the question for more that MS’s market share of people.
The only thing that would change something would be a massive release of preload linux PCs ranges (not just a few models), with the massive release of 20% of the most popular windows application avalaible for them (where is the full featured realOne for Linux btw ?), and a good 5 year commitment from the companies doing it. Why not MacOSX ? see further down.
I can’t see that happening ever. For all they are saying, HP and IBM (some of the biggest linux beneficiaries) still recommend XP for all PCs on their websites and carefully hide any preloaded linux PC away on their ecommerce platform, and then claim it doesn’t sell well enough…..
Apple could develop a healthy software business for linux, since most of their apps are without full equivalent (for the man on the street I mean) in the linux world and quite attractively priced (the home user range at least) but 3% of the world’s hardware market is a fantastic bonanza, and like SUN a decade ago, they can’t see the MS bulldozer approaching in their street….Followed closely the Intel and AMD Steamrollers…. The ipod won’t be enough I am afraid when MS removes support for Office on MacOS when its market share will have sunk further down….. add to that the price size advantage AMD and Intel will have on the 64bit market price competition….
So MS has nothing to fear imho.
…dukeinlondon…
The other end of the scale is these people are not inspired enough to look into computing because the most they ever get to try is MS.. at home or in the office..
A computer only has a “start” “Programs” “Ms Office” .. “start” “Programs” “game 1” or “game 2” etc
The software companies that are needed on linux are Adobe, Macromedia, Sage…..
Oracle took a giant step… still in business..
and games just for linux… If UT2005 was just for linux or came out on linux 6 months before windows version I am sure a lot more people would switch.. or dual boot and see they dont need windows as much as they thought they did
With Knoppix you could turn most PCs into Consoles… the Gento game CD with UT2003 was pretty good…
theres different markets out there… home user… small offices… med offices and enterprise..
u get the home user… u get most of the pie…. linux seems to have started with servers first…
The desktop is the battle ground.. “Linus said it many years ago” more installs more awareness and more understanding.. and understanding reduces the fear factor…
your point about “because the amount of mind share they are willing to devote to computing is close to 0%. ” is full on and correct but if they are not willing to devote any time to computing what difference does it matter what the fabric of the OS is…
no matter what the problem win or lin they are going to call someone more advanced in to fix it…
i dont see linux as the only answer but its the best there is at the moment in reducing the MS vapeware/virusware from killing computing and new ideas…
http://www.pctorque.com. This is where I got my laptop. I highly doubt that I would have saved $150 from them for not buying windows with it out of the kindness of their hearts.
Microsoft dropped support for PowerPC/MIPS/Alpha together with NT. The question is wether that’s a result or wether that lead to results.
However what i’m wondering is how can we get more diversity in the hardware market? Sure, supporting stuff like PCI and ISA is good, but what about other architectures? Alpha is dead, MIPS is dying, and SPARC isn’t faring well either.
PS: this news about MS was just on TV. Microsoft is goig to higher court.
according to Financial Times CeBIT evening edition is 497 mio. euros.
hyper, as you say, I am convinced that part of the problem is that most people’s experience with PCs have been pretty difficult. Most of the non technical people I know don’t even think a problem can be fixed, because with windows, they’ve mostly been advised to reboot or to re-install the whole system.
They have been encouraged to believe that a PC is a bit like a something mechanic : it gets dirty, slower and then grinds to a halt and that it is completely normal.
Hence the fact that they don’t want to know about it.
What happens if MS doesn’t pay the fine? Is the EU going to stop them from doing business in Europe? What happens if they don’t unbundle Windows Media Player from Windows? Will thier software be pulled from the shelves? Will OEM’s be forbidden from using Windows?
What will the EU do with $600,000,000? They will squander it like all governments do with the Peoples money.
“What happens if MS doesn’t pay the fine? Is the EU going to stop them from doing business in Europe?”
The same thing which happens when any company doesn’t follow a court ruling. We’re not discussing some Holy Spirit or something, and foreign businesses anywhere in the world have to obey court ruling by these local governments. Simple as that. If ye don’t like it, don’t do business in these countries.
“The same thing which happens when any company doesn’t follow a court ruling.”
And that is?