“European Union states on Monday backed a proposal to fine Microsoft a record $613.5 million (497 million euros) for abusing its dominance of PC operating systems, an EU member state source said. ‘It is 497 (million euros),’ the source told Reuters. If the full European Commission backs the fine as expected on Wednesday, it would exceed the 462-million euro penalty imposed on Hoffman-La Roche AG in 2001 for being ringleader of a vitamin cartel,” Reuters reports.
“Horacio Gutierrez, a Microsoft associate general counsel for Europe, said in a statement that the fine was unjustified. ‘We believe it’s unprecedented and inappropriate for the Commission to impose a fine on a company’s U.S. operations when those operations are already regulated by the U.S. government and the conduct at issue has been permitted by both the Department of Justice and the U.S. courts,’ he said. Microsoft reiterated that it plans to appeal,” Reuters reports.
Reuters reports, “As well as the fine, Microsoft is to be ordered to offer a version of its Windows operating system without Windows Media Player and to encourage computer makers to provide other audiovisual software. It must also license information to make the servers of rivals more compatible with Windows desktop machines. The fine amounts to slightly more than one percent of Microsoft’s roughly $53 billion cash on hand and did not impress analysts and critics. ‘This is a traffic ticket for Microsoft,’ said Thomas Vinje of Clifford Chance, who represents Microsoft critics.”
Full article here.
Well at least the EU had the guts to do something about them. Well done. And if MS appeal make the penalty worse. And 1st post.
If they seriously believe in US justice, as they claim to in this response, then maybe they should lay off Lindows in the Benelux region. Can’t have it both ways.
yeah
yeah
I guess the fine doesn’t mean much since they have 50B+ in the bank. Plus they’ll make that up in a quarter anyway.
I’m more interested in getting them to sell an OS without all those extras embedded into it.
No Windows Media player is interesting. Better yet, no Internet Explorer would be better. Might as well throw MSN off of there, too.
*yawn* Make the fine 100 times greater and then you’ll get some attention. By setting the fine where it is, is just about on par with vitamin thing. This issue seems to be a bigger, wider, more influential problem, which demands a more appropriate (and signficantly greater) fine. This is not even a slap on the wrist. Although, we have to give the EU credit for doing something… unlike our local authorities.
Just loose change in Gates� left pocket.
Their stock will go up more tomorrow than the fine cost them.
Again, Europe shows it has no balls. What else is new?
“Again, Europe shows it has no balls. What else is new?”
Perhaps that in this case the USofA in analogue to that Mr Bean movie can be described as “It knows no fear, it knows no danger, it knows nothing?”.
At least Brussels is doing something, laying some foundation for future use against MS as well. Ten times an increasing fine, say until Longhorn, is a lot of money, also for MS. There is a tiny sprinkle of hope at least…
If you reckon Europe has no balls, then how feeble has America’s dealings with Microsoft been then ?
They really showed Bill who was in charge.
Bill was !
MickeyMouseSoft = extra �3 000 000 discount.
Why didn’t they say �1/2 billion?
Well this is a good start. What do we have next?
Here you go….
Three Apple engineers and three Microsoft engineers are traveling by train to a conference. At the station, the three Microsoft engineers each buy tickets and watch as the three Apple engineers buy only a single ticket.
“How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?” asks a Microsoft engineer. “Watch and you’ll see,” answers the Apple engineer.
They all board the train. The Microsoft engineers take their respective seats but all three Apple engineers cram into a rest room and close the door behind them. Shortly after the train has departed, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He knocks on the rest room door and says, “Ticket, please.” The door opens just a crack and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes it and moves on. The Microsoft engineers saw this and agreed it was quite a clever idea.
So after the conference, the Microsoft engineers decide to copy the Apple engineers (as they always do) on the return trip and save some money. When they get to the station, they buy a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the Apple engineers don’t buy a ticket at all.
“How are you going to travel without a ticket?” asks one perplexed Microsoft engineer. “Watch and you’ll see,” answers an Apple engineer.
When they board the train the three Microsoft engineers cram into a rest room and the three Apple engineers cram into another one nearby. The train departs. Shortly afterward, one of the Apple engineers leaves his rest room and walks over to the rest room where the Microsoft employees are hiding. He knocks on the door and says, “Ticket, please…”
This is a copy from http://www.macdevcenter.com/
I wish the fine would have been bigger but at least it wasn’t only symbolic (over half a billion dollars is not symbolic). I wonder what they are going to use the cash for? I would be cool if it was used to promote M$ competitors in some way.
I think the sans WMP version having to be made available is more important.
Man, I also can’t believe M$ has the balls to wave the “But America says it’s OK flag”. They got away with murder in the US and its a crying shame.
Finland…LOL!!!!! 😀
The US cop-out on M$ was a political payback by Bush. I am a Republican and do not dispute it. They strung out the case until after the election and then let Redmond off after kicking their a*s in court. An appropriate amount would have been 10x the fine.
Well, I’m not a Republican, but to say Bush was paying M$ back is absurd. The fact is, the Justice Department’s case against M$ was weak and M$ would have drug it out for years in appeals and it would have cost the tax payers of America millions, they why they got off so lightly. You people really need to get a life…
Bill Gates is struttin’ around town braggin’ that he’s got $530 in his Dockers�, and then has the stones to bitch about paying a $6 fine.
Fsck!
At least Bill gets the last laugh knowing HOW he got the $530. That’ll teach anyone to try to get him.
Hrrrmmmfff!
It’s good the EU has balls that the present freakshow US government doesn’t, but I’d wish they’d gone farther, and not only demanded WiMP removed from Windows, but Windows removed from Windows!
The ill-liberals in the EU are just jealous because an American companys dominates the software business. They haven’t done anything with computers since the first computer was invented in Britain in 1943. Stripping the windows media player or browser are stupid since any fool can download it for free. Not to mention 50%-90 of the computers in the EU are running a ripped version downloaded from the P2P tools. Look, MS got where it is fair and square. Socialism doesn’t work. Stick to what you Euro biatches are good at: over priced cars, over priced food, and over priced clothes, high taxes, and rude service.
I agree with Glenn. The EU won’t use the big fine payday to help EU software companys compete or develop new products. The fine will just go into public coffers to help for some old retired chap’s Viagra, buy needles for junkies, buy food for a fat family on welfare, or buy a new chair to warm and pencil to push for a government bureaucrat. Plus, the red diaper doper pony tail lawyers will probably take their standard 33% fee.
” The fact is, the Justice Department’s case against M$ was weak…”
Microsoft was found guilty. How’s that for a weak case? Microsoft appealed and the guilty verdict was upheld. Again, how’s that for a weak case? Microsoft got off with only a consent decree and got to keep the result of their illegal monopolistic behavior in the settlement (keep on bundling IE). That DoJ dropped the ball or lost their balls is a fact. How fair is it to let a convicted thief go with nothing more than a promise not to steal and keep his loot? The only thing we don’t have proof beyond reasonable doubt is Bush’s admin and Microsoft playing under the table. But we know for sure how Microsoft tried to stretch the trial hoping that Bush got into the office at the end of the trial, how Microsoft made campaing donations, how Microsoft lobbied very hard etc..
To say Bush was paying back MS is absurd is absurd because you have no proof either. If MS had been punished properly, tax payer wouldn’t have had to foot the bill. Microsoft would have paid the bill and then some more.
Because MS got off lightly, this mess in the media player market happens and the mess in Internet search etc. will happen. How many more times do you want to see Microsoft illegally abuse its monopoly? The doesn’t take much common sense to see that if your profit is orders of magnitude bigger than the punishment for illegally abusing your monopoly, you will continue to abuse your monopoly.
Glenn:
[B]They haven’t done anything with computers since the first computer was invented in Britain in 1943[/B]
Now, you see the page you’re looking at? That’s running on something called the [I]World Wide Web[/I].
Now I know Americans like to think they invented everything, but the Web was invented by an English fellow called Tim Berners-Lee. England is part of the United Kingdom, which is part of [B]Europe[/B].
Even more interestingly, Tim was working at the time for the [I]Conseil Europ�en pour la Recherche Nucl�aire[/I] (or CERN, for short) which involves some 20 European states (including practically all of the EU) in what is the “world’s largest particle physics centre”, and of which the United States is nothing more than an observer.
So a European quasi-governmental entity was directly responsible for what is possibly the most culturally significant element that the computing world has ever delivered to the world.
Hmmmm�
Glenn: Any economic understanding?
This piece is about fighting monopoly (i.e. ensuring the market function). Sue your school (or microsoft encarta?) for not telling you about those things.
The larger presidence that is being set is that now M$ is beginning to accumulate a very distinct track record that will be hard to market out of. Plus, these things tend to have momentum over time. M$ will begin to lose favor worldwide over time. A company sitting back doing nothing to protect its lead other than buying up small innovative companies and then stagnating their efforts will ultimately fail. I’ll never predict Apple to be the size of M$ but, Jobs is right, “We’re going to innovate…”
Can’t everyone see the trouble Wintel is in now. Intel slipping with its chips, M$ with security holes everywhere, monopolistic marketing, an OS rewrite years away and the inability to respond to both Apple and Sony on the iPod and PS platforms respectfully. I’d say sell your stock holding now if you got any. If Windows Media doesn’t become the default standard in Hollywood soon there is really little for M$ left to keep the money generating going. Watch them and their momentum wind down slowly.
Don’t believe me? There’s been plenty of other big companies whom have met their marketing fate the same way M$ is going to. History will repeat itself over and over because the motivations (greed) are the same in each instance.