“Microsoft was formally charged with monopoly abuse by Europe’s top antitrust authority, the European Commission, over the way it bundles the Internet Explorer browser with Windows,” Paul Meller reports for IDG News Service.
MacDailyNews Take: Some bundle that is; not only do you get the worst operating system on the market, but the worst browser, too.
Meller reports, “The move follows an unsuccessful attempt by U.S. authorities nine years ago to strip Internet Explorer (IE) of its unfair advantage over competing browsers. European authorities were more successful in their prosecution of Microsoft over similar antitrust offenses five years ago, fining the company over €1.6 billion and ordering it to change the way it does business.”
“The new charges are the first of many anticipated against the company in the wake of a failed court appeal by Microsoft last year against the original European antitrust ruling,” Meller reports. “The latest statement of objections follows a relatively short investigation, one year long, sparked by a complaint from Opera Software, a Norwegian browser developer.”
“The latest antitrust charges against Microsoft almost certainly won’t be the last,” Meller reports. “At the same time it opened the investigation into the bundling of IE, the Commission also opened a separate probe to see whether Microsoft withholds information from companies that want to make products compatible with its Microsoft Office productivity suite. It is also looking for interoperability problems with Windows server products and Microsoft’s .Net software framework.”
Full article here.
