Microsoft loses appeal versus the European commission.

[Ayano]

I blame all the unix users complaining about poor development tools and applications designed for their systems. well them and other OS users.

If windows has done anything right, its been it's strong support for developers which other OSs have lacked. Well there is also the fact that they are the largest user base, but what brought that about?

"developers developers developers developers... developers developers developers developers!"

the mac guys had a field day with that one, but at least Microsoft knows where it's heart is rather than touting flashy GrApHicS with poor stability and an interface with a 2 year old in mind.

Regardless though, i wouldn't trust my server to a windows box, I'll always reserve that to unix. I've heard somw good things about windows.net, anyone have an opinion on that?

[Jerome Scuggs]

"How is Microsoft inflicting punishment? Does it force anyone to buy its bundled product? Does it forcibly prevent anyone from using Quicktime? Is it not obvious that the EU directly is punishing the consumer by intervening with Microsoft? Who will bear the humongous legal fees and fines, at least in part, if not the consumer? Who will lose out from the chill on future innovation if not the consumer? And isn’t the EU directly responsible for all of this harm?

What utter hypocrisy and stupidity are on parade here.

Are we supposed to pity Microsoft’s rivals? Are we supposed to reward their incompetence? The court opined that selling media software with Windows had damaged rivals. If it was a successful product, what else could we expect but that rivals should be damaged? It is a good sign that they have been damaged. It means that customers were benefited. The rivals do not own the customers. They cannot make them buy their products, not unless the EU intervenes and tries to raise Microsoft’s costs."

nt

[MetalHeadz]

Lol, I love the way the American Government and indeed European financial organisations exaggerate any possible infringement of free trade with upper-limit fines on conglomerates like Microsoft. It's this mentality that just because a company is extremely profitable it some how owes you money. We saw the same with McClaren earlier this week for some dubiously small crime.

I don't understand how 'hindering innovation' is such a crime, by Microsofts very presence in the computing market they hinder innovation.

Don't get me wrong, I don't support serious infringements of free trade such as price fixing and such. It just seems to me that a lot of Economists like to get on the moral bandwagon with regard to large monopolies. The fact is, whole economies hinge on the success of companies such as Microsoft - give it some respect.

[Jerome Scuggs]

why don't we just get rid of the patents office so noone will ever have to worry about being locked out? it's not fair that bill gates copyrighted windows, fuck that guy. the fact that he developed technology that i can't use is pretty fuckin' lame, and for some reason the mere fact that he owns technology that i can't freely have makes me never want to touch a computer again. christ, bill gates acts like he invented the home desktop computer or something. how dare he have a say in how others steal his technology?

[Zerzera]

I wonder if it's going to change as much as the EC hopes it will. But I do hope that Microsoft settles with the verdict.

[Zerzera]

Antitrust: Commission welcomes CFI ruling upholding Commission’s decision on Microsoft's abuse of dominant market position

The European Commission welcomes today's ruling by the Court of First Instance upholding the European Commission’s 2004 decision on Microsoft's abuse of its dominant market position and confirming the totality of the fine imposed. In this decision, Microsoft was fined €497 million for infringing the EC Treaty rules on abuse of a dominant market position (Article 82) by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players (see IP/04/382 and MEMO/04/70). This conduct hindered innovation in the markets concerned to the detriment of consumers. To put an end to this abusive behaviour, the Commission ordered Microsoft to disclose interoperability information which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers and to offer a version of its Windows operating system without Windows Media Player. The Court’s ruling confirms that the Commission was right to prohibit Microsoft's anti-competitive conduct which harmed competition to the detriment of consumers.

source: European Commission website

The case:

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/antitrust/cases/microsoft/