forbes.com — In a major step toward new penalties against Microsoft Corp., Europe's antitrust regulators voted unanimously Monday in favor of fining the world's largest software company for flouting a 2004 ruling, two people close to the case said.
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Closed AccountJul 5, 2006
"You know, in the US you can't rule that someone has failed to comply with your requirements before the deadline to comply with them has passed."This commission has been slapped down twice already by EU courts. They imposed a record fine because they could, and they've never explicitly stated what the bar is for acceptable documentation for them. I suspect they'll keep moving the bar around..I mean they've already decided Microsoft hasn't complied. When they decide non-compliance before Microsoft has even made their final submission it pretty much rules out a fair evaluation. The EU as a governing body is corrupt.The EU commission is bent on extracting their exorbitant fines from Microsoft.
drealothJul 5, 2006
Tacroy:One of the requirements of capitalism is to allow for competition. One cannot allow a company to use their current position on the market to stop competition.Take for example the following scenario: Microsoft has a huge amount of cash on hand, as well as a product (Windows) with an incredibly low fixed cost per copy (the cost of creating the physical part of one copy of Windows, probably $1 or so). So what they do is this: make their OS free, and start giving companies like Dell and HP $200 for every computer that they sell. They then go to Intel and offer them an amount of money inversely proportional to the amount of chips that they sell to Apple. Apple can't compete with this - they can't get very many chips from Intel and at the same time, they can't sell enough of the ones that they get because Dell and HP are selling computers that literally cost half of what Apple's do. As a result, Apple goes bankrupt - not because they didn't offer a solid product or have a bad business model, but because they literally can't compete with Microsoft. After the competition is successfully out of the market, they pull up their prices to higher than ever (since there's no alternative) and start pulling in a profit like there's no tomorrow. They can then go onto more markets doing the same thing, burning through their cash on hand for a while but then making back the profits back tenfold through economic iron-fistedness instead of innovation.Does this strike you as fair and something that should be legal? Good for competition? Good for the consumer? You seem to think that this is perfectly healthy for an economy.(Just a quick note - this isn't meant to be anti-Microsoft or pro-Apple, it's just an example. Replace Microsoft with IBM, General Motors, Walmart, Google, Amazon or any other dominant company you can think of.)
arevosJul 5, 2006
You show an alarming ignorance about this case. The EU has asked Microsoft to give full documentation on some of its protocols and API, in order to ensure that Microsoft's competitors have access to the same interoperability information as Microsoft does. Microsoft currently makes use of undocumented API calls and undocumented protocols that give it a clear advantage ove its competitors. The EU has ordered Microsoft to level the playing field.In response to this, Microsoft offered to provide thousands of undocumented source code under strict licenses and royalties. The EU has a panel of independant experts, including some who Microsoft picked out themselves, who pointed out that this was not complying with what the EU had requested. Microsoft is being fined because it's not obeying local laws. Microsoft have been given two years to comply, and they still have not. It's as simple as that.
tacroyJul 5, 2006
@ commenter's -I would just like to clarify that my comment was about the person's comment I replied too. Not the entire situation in general. I agree that competition is a vital part of capitalism, that is a given. I was just responding to the original posters opinion that Microsoft as a corporation somehow "owed" us something.@ mcspang I don't know what part of my comment insulted you so much that you had to tell me to "STFU" seems a bit extreme.@ hosiahI'm sorry that you wish my daughter to be sold into prostitution, be assured I would never wish something to happen to you or your family.No, money is not the most important thing in the world to me and I don't believe that me talking about systems of economics in some way shows that I am a heartless and uncaring person that believe the mafia should rule the streets.@ DrealothThank you for your reply it is both well thought out and well put. I would like to point out that I agree with you completely (as mentioned at the beginning of this post) and was simply giving my opinion on the original posters comments on how corporations owe us something.