“Microsoft suffered a decisive antitrust defeat in Europe on Monday, sending its shares down 2 percent in pre-market trade,; David Lawsky and Michele Sinner report for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: Lawsky and Sinner report on Microsoft. How apropos.
Lawsky and Sinner continue, “A European Union court backed a European Commission ruling that Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, illegally abused its market power to crush competitors. Europe’s top competition regulator said the ruling could lead to a ‘significant drop’ in Microsoft’s 95 percent market share.”
Lawsky and Sinner report, “‘Its clearly a major defeat for Microsoft. There is no doubt it will spur the Commission on to regulate Microsoft much more significantly,’ said Chris Bright, a British competition lawyer. ‘They will find that future innovation by Microsoft will be hampered quite significantly.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Hamper what? Microsoft innovation is an oxymoron.
Lawsky and Sinner continue, “The court upheld a record 497 million euro ($689.9 million) fine imposed on the company as part of the original decision… More importantly, it endorsed Commission sanctions against Microsoft’s tying together of software and refusal to give rival makers of office servers information to enable their products to work smoothly with Windows.”
“Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith was downbeat in speaking to reporters at the courtroom, promising the company would obey the ruling in full. He said there was no decision yet on whether to appeal to the European Court of Justice,” Lawsky and Sinner report.
“Since the original decision, the Commission has fined Microsoft a further 280.5 million euros, saying it had failed to comply with the interoperability sanction. The EU regulator is considering a further fine for non-compliance,” Lawsky and Sinner report.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “The Dude” and “RadDoc” for the heads up.]