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Microsoft faces EU antitrust probe over browser choice SNAFU; Microsoft blames ‘technical error’

“Microsoft Corp. risks European Union penalties for failing to comply with a settlement to give users a choice of web browsers, more than two years after it tried to end a decade-long clash with antitrust regulators,” Aoife White reports for Bloomberg.

“EU Competition Commission Joaquin Almunia said Microsoft may have misled regulators by failing to display a browser choice screen to users of the Windows operating system since February 2011,” White reports. “The world’s largest software company blamed a technical error for not showing the screen to some users and offered to extend its commitment until March 2016.”

White reports, “Microsoft has already been fined 1.68 billion euros ($2.06 billion) in EU antitrust probes. The Redmond, Washington-based company agreed to offer access to rival browsers as a part of a settlement to repair its relationship with the bloc’s regulators. ‘I trusted that the company’s reports were accurate,’ EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in an e-mailed statement. ‘If following our investigation, the infringement was confirmed, Microsoft should expect sanctions.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Joaquin Almunia must be a blissful Mac user, too.

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