Microsoft vs EC round-up
233653
The verdict and reaction... Yesterday saw the long-awaited verdict to Microsoft's appeal of European anti-trust action. On all major points Microsoft lost its appeal, although the commission's imposition of a monitoring trustee has been overturned.â¦
118115
The European Union's top competition   regulator clashed with Microsoft on Tuesday over security   upgrades in the U.S. software giant's new Windows Vista   operating system in a re-run of past antitrust battles.
252110
The European Union Court of First Instance has upheld the US$665.4 million fine on Microsoft imposed by the executive European Commission in March and will now force the company to offer European computer makers a version of the Windows operating system
197812
Software giant Microsoft  has filed an appeal against a 280.5 million euro ($356.4 million) fine the European Commission imposed in July, holding it defied a 2004 antitrust ruling.
541600
The European Union's top competition  regulator clashed with Microsoft  on Tuesday over  security upgrades in the U.S. software giant's new Windows  Vista operating system in a re-run of past antitrust battles.
491983
commentary Microsoft was a little unhappy with an article I wrote this week because it contained a slight factual error. The error arose from two separate companies finding an almost identical security hole
174102
Zawodny  threads off of Scoble  on the IE issue:  "I have to say, when I first read that I nearly fell off my chair laughing. I was thinking "how stupid ARE these IE guys?!?!?!" But we all know that Microsoft is full of smart people who care about what they're doing. So something really doesn't compute here."  "Last time I checked, IE wasn't even close to feature parity with Mozilla's browsers. No popup blocking, no tabbed browsing, etc."  "Does the IE team really not know what their product is missing?"  Perhaps.  It's highly likely that they just don't know.  The bigger issue here is that Microsoft products can't fail and they can't succeed.  Microsoft has 40-50 billion in the bank.  There ...
201402
Readers find fault with Wired News' review of Microsoft's new operating system. Plus: Links to our most popular blogs.
381321
Opera Software has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer Web browser to Windows, the Norwegian company said Thursday.The complaint, which was filed with the European Commission on Wednesday, says Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the desktop PC market by offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows, and hindering interoperability by not following accepted standards with IE.Opera is asking the Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows, or include other browsers as a standard part of its operating system. It also wants it to require Microsoft to adhere to industry standards with its Web browser.The issue of standards is seen as important because if all Web browsers do not use the same standards, Web site developers are likely to design their Web sites to work with the most widely-used browser, which is Internet Explorer. That gives people a disincentive to use other browsers.Microsoft&#39;s spokesman in Brussels did not immediately have a comment on the lawsuit. The company has argued in the past that consumers benefit from its tight integration of IE and Windows.Opera said it filed the complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them.The Commission is expected to comment at its daily midday briefing Thursday.The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), a Brussels-based trade group that counts Opera among its members, said it strongly endorses Opera&#39;s move.&quot;By tying its Internet Explorer product to its monopoly Windows operating system and refusing to faithfully implement industry accepted open standards, Microsoft deprives consumers of a real choice in internet browsers. Browsers are the gateway to the internet. Microsoft seeks to control this gateway,&quot; said Thomas Vinje, speaking for ECIS.Opera&#39;s complaint signals a potentially new front in&#160;Microsoft&#39;s long-running battle with the European authorities, and comes three months after the Court of First Instance (CFI) -- Europe&#39;s second highest court --&#160;threw out Microsoft&#39;s appeal of a 2004 European Commission antitrust ruling against it.The CFI endorsed the Commission&#39;s finding that Microsoft had illegally bundled its media playing software, Media Player, into Windows, exploiting its monopoly in the desktop operating system market to gain influence in the market for desktop media player software.Opera&#39;s complaint against the bundling of IE into Windows uses the same legal argument.However, the Commission&#39;s remedy against Microsoft&#39;s bundling has proved useless, which may weaken the value of the 2004 ruling as a legal precedent.The Commission ordered Microsoft to sell a second version of Windows that has Media Player stripped out. Microsoft christened the second version Edition N, and put it on the market in 2005, at the same price as the fully bundled Windows. Not surprisingly, no one bought it.&#160;
705310
A look at two highly successful E&Ps with entirely different strategies.
135046
Europeâs antitrust regulator has opened two new investigations into claims that Microsoft has abused its dominant market position.
416180
HONG KONG (AFX) - Microsoft Corp said the European Commission&#39;s view of the media player market is &quot;incorrect,&quot; and will argue in Brussels later this week that competition is more &quot;vibrant&quot; than the EC believes, the Financial Times reported on its website
139384
A European court on Wednesday ruled against Microsoft in its long-running antitrust confrontation with the European Commission over the company&#39;s Windows software.
737176
A European judge today cast a skeptical eye on whether Microsoft Corp. should be forced to create two versions of its Windows operating system, one with its program for
413330
(InfoWorld) - The European Commission has again criticized Microsoft's response to a 2004 antitrust ruling, opening up the possibility of further fines for the company. In March 2004,Â the Commission fined MicrosoftÂ and ordered it to provide its competitors with information allowing them to develop workgroup server software interoperable Windows desktop operating system. It thenÂ fined the company againÂ last July for failing to provide that information on time. The Commission has sent Microsoft another statement of objections, saying it considers the interoperability information Microsoft has offered is still incomplete, said Jonathan Todd, Commission spokesman on competition issues. In addition, Microsoft is charging its competitors too much for that information: it does not justify the price tag put on it because it is not innovative, he said. Microsoft has four weeks in which to respond to the statement of objections, after which it may face further daily fines for noncompliance with the antitrust ruling. Even as Microsoft and the Commission dispute whether Microsoft is in compliance with the ruling, another court is considering whether Microsoft should have to comply at all. The European Court of First Instance, in Luxembourg, is still considering Microsoft's appeal against the Commission's March 2004 ruling that Microsoft abused its monopoly in desktop operating systems to exploit markets for workgroup server and media player software. At that time, the Commission ordered Microsoft to pay a fine of â¬497 million (then around $600 million), ship a version of Windows without media player software, and publish the server software interoperability information disputed in today's announcement. (Peter Sayer, in Paris, contributed to this report.)
294884
The European Commission has opened two new antitrust investigations of Microsoft&#39;s activities.
132625
(InfoWorld) - As judgment day in the nine-year-long antitrust battle between Microsoft and the European Commission draws near, neither side in the protracted dispute knows for sure how it will react to the news on the day. Although the date of the ruling by the European Court of First Instance has been public since July, the European commissioner in charge of competition, Neelie Kroes, still hasn't decided whether she will hold a press conference on Monday. Meanwhile, Tom Brookes, a Microsoft spokesman, said the company is waiting until Monday morning before finalizing plans for addressing the rank's journalists from around the world gathering in Luxembourg, the court's location, and Brussels and who are eager to place "winner" and "loser" tags on the adversaries. "How much can you prepare for an outcome you don't know?" Brookes said. "Clearly Mrs. Kroes isn't going to give a press conference if the Commission loses outright," said Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd. Microsoft's appeal against the Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling is the biggest event in the working lives of everyone directly involved. They know that Monday's outcome will influence the software industry's future and will be a reference in all future European antitrust cases, especially ones in the fast-changing world of IT. From Microsoft's perspective, it will determine "under what circumstances market-leading companies can improve their products for consumers," said Erich Andersen, vice president and associate general counsel for Microsoft in Europe, in a statement. "The issue here is whether Microsoft should be able to regulate the market from a superdominant position, or whether the market should determine which products should gain access to consumers," countered Todd in a telephone interview. Both sides also know that how the outcome is perceived in the press is almost as important as the actual outcome, which is likely to be hundreds of pages in length, devilishly nuanced, and highly complex. Most people expect several versions of the court ruling to appear in the media on Monday. Initial reports will emerge shortly after the ruling is made public at 9:30 a.m. local time, and will probably focus on whether the Commission has to repay any or all of the â¬497 million ($685 million) fine it imposed on Microsoft in 2004. Repaying the fine will be seen as evidence that Microsoft's appeal against the 2004 Commission ruling was successful. Letting the fine stand will be viewed as a Microsoft loss. But what happens to the fine is the least important aspect of Monday's ruling, according to Thomas Vinje, a partner in the law firm Clifford Chance, who heads the legal team of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), a Commission ally. "It's the least relevant yardstick," Vinje said. "Far more important is how the judges assess individual facts and points of law because this will determine what legal precedents can be gleaned from this case." A senior lawyer on Microsoft's side agreed. "If the court reduces the fine on Microsoft, saying that the anticompetitive behavior isn't so serious, but upholds the Commission's broad argument, then a lawyer in a year's time dealing with a different antitrust case will be more interested in what the court specifically said than in whether the fine was reduced or not," he said, asking not to be named. Journalists will largely be dependent on lawyers' interpretations of the document, which won't come out until some time after the initial ruling. The story may well change dramatically during the day, once details of the ruling emerge, possibly even reversing a superficial initial assessment of who won or lost. The finest legal minds involved on both sides will pore over the document looking for ways to claim victory and to shape perceptions of the ruling. Microsoft appealed both strands in the Commission's landmark 2004 ruling, which concluded that Microsoft was abusing the dominant position of its Windows operating system in order to muscle in on other sectors of the software market. The Commission concluded that Microsoft was competing unfairly against other vendors by bundling its Media Player multimedia software in Windows. The Commission also ruled that Microsoft monopolized the market for low-end server operating systems by failing to reveal interoperability information to rivals. Last April the court held a three-day hearing during which the Commission and Microsoft, together with their software industry allies, tried to convince the judges of their arguments. Observers foresee four possible outcomes on Monday, the first two clear-cut but unlikely, the other two mixed and therefore more probable. The court could side with the Commission on both sides of the case. It might deem Microsoft an obstacle to innovation in the software industry and order the immediate breakup of the company, effectively appropriating the Windows operating system and making it a public utility. In the second clear-cut scenario, the court sides with Microsoft on both counts and declares that the rapidly changing IT industry is defined by a string of monopolies and that one monopoly is inevitably overtaken by another in time. More likely, the court may side with the Commission on the interoperability side but uphold Microsoft's appeal against the bundling ruling. Microsoft may be ordered to release all interoperability information to rivals immediately. This result would open up Office-related markets to open source software rivals. However, Microsoft would no longer need to sell a version of Windows without Media Player, and it would most probably bundle more and more features onto Windows in the future, to the likely detriment of any halfway successful innovation from a rival, such as Google. Alternatively, Microsoft may lose the bundling argument but win on the interoperability side. The Court may order Microsoft to set up a separate company to sell a completely unbundled version of Windows. This entity would be free to compete with the fully bundled version and strike partnerships with other software developers. If the third scenario prevails, then Microsoft could face a string of lawsuits in Europe. The Commission is already examining an ECIS complaint that claims Microsoft has stifled competition in the market for office tools software by failing to allow rival software from interoperating properly with Microsoft Office. "Victory on the interoperability side of the case on Monday would put wind in our sails," said the ECIS's Vinje. But a loss would put a swift end to a new attack, and any others that might lie in waiting for Monday's outcome. "Monday's ruling will have a huge effect on how the ECIS complaint is dealt with," Todd said.