Microsoft convicted in Europe

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Microsoft convicted in Europe

The European Commission (EC), something like the government of the European Union (EU), has convicted Microsoft to paying a fine of 500 million EURO (1 EURO is a bit more than 1 US$), disclosing information, and releasing a stripped-down Windows version within 120 days.

As always, John Lettice comments in The Register.

The EC concludes that Microsoft is abusing a monopoly position for unfair competition.
The main problem is Media Player, which is shipped with Windows, but competing with other applications.

The fine that Microsoft has to pay amounts to about 1% of their cash. It is the highest fine ever asked by the EC.

Of course, Microsoft intends to appeal.

Those who know me also know my point of view:
Although i am not anti-Microsoft at all (rather a Microsoft proponent), i do agree that certain things have to change.
So far, cases against Microsoft have not had much result. The settlement with the DOJ in the US, dating from August 2002, has not solved anything. I consider this settlement a complete failure.
This case will also not change anything.

What is really needed is an attitude change in Redmond.
No court or commission can make that happen.

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Print posted @ Wednesday, March 24, 2004 11:33 PM

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# re: Microsoft convicted in Europe

An attitude change? There has been a notable attitude change. You need to keep up. The new anti-Microsoft line is "attitude isn't enough, we want a change in actions".

Just a few examples of attitude change:

1. Executives bonuses are now based on customer satisfaction (this ruling certainly won't help those bonuses), not performance
2. Company blogs are about to top 500, unheard of in the IT industry. No corporate red tape in that area, bloggers can talk about anything
3. Longhorn is the result of listening to developers and customers. We'll see how it turns out, but they have stopped shipping OS's "just cause". Of course, the new anti-Microsoft line is "they can't stick to their target dates and don't have enough confidence to keep shipping OS's regularly".

Sometimes you can't win. I'm glad I'm not Microsoft.

Still, I agree, things need to change, I just believe that the attitude has largely changed, and most of the legal activity that's happening is based on decisions made 3-7 years ago, not stuff happening today.

Besides the SCO stuff (alleged), Microsoft hasn't really done much that qualifies as anti-competitive or monopolistic lately. At least not on the scale it used to.

So, yeah, attitude change: check. Action change: pending. We'll see. 3/25/2004 12:35 AM | Jeremy C. Wright

# re: Microsoft convicted in Europe

You are right, certain things have changed already.
But the basic problem has not disappeared.
Microsoft still makes it almost impossible for competitors to develop software that has the same functionality as their own applications, especially if you want to integrate your applications in Windows.
The problem is not the upper management.
I don't believe there is an active strategy at Microsoft to make the life of their competitors hard.
Well, not anymore...
I don't see them do something like the anti-DR-DOS code anymore.
But the problem seems to be individuals at Microsoft who want to tell ISVs what they can or can not do.
In communications with Microsoft, when asking how something can be done, it's quite common to hear "This can't be done", even if their own applications are doing this.
When you then ask how their own applications do it, you get the answer "this is not supported and specific to this application".
So the basic problem is, in my opinion:
Microsoft has access to a much wider API than any ISV. They can do things that we can't.
This is not a strategy to stop comnpetitors.
But it is the attitude of individuals working at Microsoft who want to tell us which features our software should or should not have.
Mostly based on things like "Are we really sure that this aspect of Windows will never change in the future?".
They think they are doing the right thing. When arguing with them, i can never convince them that they are wrong. But they are.
So i have been on this crusade for many years, trying to make shell programming easier. I have been publishing undocumented functions on the internet, i have been arguing with Microsoft people, i have told them about documentation errors and shortcomings, i have gone to the press, and so on. But still without any real result. Shell programming is still black magic. 3/25/2004 7:15 AM | Henk Devos

Henk Devos