Microsoft must pay $610m fine to eu

[dm 9]

Quote[/b] ]The European Union slapped Microsoft Corp. with a record fine Wednesday for violating EU antitrust law

Now the question I'm asking myself, was this law around BEFORE M$ started "bundling" Media Player with Windows...

If it has come into effect recently, surely M$ could "lay the smack down" with its high-priced lawyers on the EU?

I personally dont use Media Player, so I cant see how it coming "free" with windows is forcing the software down our throats? I see it as simply another "option" for me when I'm using windows...

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Quote[/b] ]The European Union slapped Microsoft Corp. with a record fine Wednesday for violating EU antitrust law

Now the question I'm asking myself, was this law around BEFORE M$ started "bundling" Media Player with Windows...

If it has come into effect recently, surely M$ could "lay the smack down" with its high-priced lawyers on the EU?

I personally dont use Media Player, so I cant see how it coming "free" with windows is forcing the software down our throats? I see it as simply another "option" for me when I'm using windows...

If you got the EU on the other side of the table then trust me even the most expensive lawyer will look like Mickey Mouse!

[der bastler 0]

Windows never had ANY REALY competitors and still kept developing.

Wrong. They used FUD (Fear, Uncertanity and Doubt) to kill any competition.

In 1991 there existed two major DOS: MS-DOS and DR-DOS.

Microsoft included some error messages in beta versions of Windows 3.1 which appeared if the underlying OS was DR-DOS => rumours of incompatibility of DR-DOS => this prevented major partner IBM from switching from MS-DOS to DR-DOS...

Additionally Microsoft cut drastically in prices for OEMs if they payed small license fees for every sold unit (i.e. PC). A subtil mechanism that killed nearly every competition on the OEM market. The FTC started investigations in 1990 because such behaviour is anticompetitive following US law...

In 1993 they came to a compromise: license fees should only be raised per Windows installation, not per PC. But that were three years of whiped out competition...

In 1994 Microsoft Customers were prevented from trying OS/2 with the announcement of "Chicago" --codename of Win95, presented in late 1995, 1.5 years later.

IBM, major partner of Microsoft in the 90s, offered PCs with OS/2 and Windows in 1995. Microsoft wanted them to promote Windows as primary OS and MS-Office instead of Lotus. IBM refused, Microsoft held back the new Win95, IBM had to accept, the license fees climbed from $9 per Win3.11-copy to $60 per Win95-copy.

In the mid-90s Intel developed better support for Multimedia. NSP (Native Signal Processing) should provide powerful APIs to every hardware and software developer so they could use all caps of x86 CPUs. Microsoft didn't like this and threatened Intel with termination of x86-support. Intel accepted...

The browser war: The Internet Explorer (IE) and preliminary access to MSN were installed with every Win95 installation. "Bundling of products, so what" I hear you ask? Well, Compaq replaced IE with Netscape Communicator... and Microsoft cancelled their license...

The Java hijacking: Microsoft licensed Sun's Java in 1996 and changed it => MS-Java needed the Win-API to function properly. Wait a moment, why choose Java? Right, because of platform independence...

Very nice company, indeed.

[Colossus 2]

I agree der bastler

Good info.

[red oct 2]

CNN News

Haha! At last someone is doing something with Bill Gates money.

Why should that man have so much money? He hardly even use half

of it. GIVE THE WORLD MORE MONEY, AND MAKE A MORE SAFER

WINDOWS! Idiot...

What do you guys think?

just on a side note: Bill Gates has made the largest charity donations to orphans in Africia than any other private company in the world to date. he even left his nice home w/ his wife to go to africia to deliver the donations personaly, so i think its fair to say he's done his part to make the world a little easier for some people.

on topic:

though i like to see him maybe rethink these "deals" he has w/ computer companies like Gateway and Dell that really only serve as red tape, i think governments should quit telling him how to run his company and pay more attention to the real corrupt companies. he shouldn't have to ask for permission from some stupid government if he's allowed to put something in his software. and to say that there's no room for any others to compete against Microsoft is a bit unfair imo, Theres OS 10 from Apple and people who use it swear by it as just as good if not better and more reliable than Windows. and of course theres Linux which is starting to catch up to microsoft and will probaly start giving Bill Gates quite a bit of competition.

[Balschoiw 0]

Won´t be the last charge for microsoft.

Countries like Switzerland and other non EU members now have a guideline and will follow it. Switzerland already sued Microsoft and a lot of other countries will follow.

Of course Microsoft will go to court and of course this will delay the final decision but Microsoft did wrong and has to pay an appropriate 10 percent of their yearly income in each country. For Switzerland this is another 53 million Euros.

Rules have to be followed, even Microsoft has to. I have no problem with that.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

i vote less fine.

[PSC 0]

...People are not forced to run ms software. You can first of all always run Linux and skip ms all together...

Nah, thats wrong. After all you can't play OFP on Linux, Mac OS, or any other OS. So you are forced to run M$ Windows again

[shinRaiden 0]

Actually, Media Player is a bundled (for now) product with Windows.

Does anybody else remember the good old days when IE 2.0 came on a single floppy? IE was yet another Mosaic port/hack built as a seperate app to compete with Netscape. To increase market share, MS tossed it in the Windows distribution and Office as an independent goodie. Netscape and AOL complained that MS was abusing prevailing user apathy, and that users being too lazy to remove IE and load Netscape would constitute an unfair advantage for MS. When the courts were told that IE was functionally independent, it was widely believed that that would be in violation of a previous anti-trust settlement to not bundle any non-OS apps. Therefore, MS moved several key libraries into IE, and changed several of the central GUI libraries to make Windows dependent on IE. Therefore they were able to successfully argue that IE was a critical part of the OS, and removal would cripple the OS.

MS now has various options:

1) Pay the extortion money. This is better discussed in the "War on terror" thread.

2) Fight it in the courts. Good luck, MS likely won't have nearly the influence$ it had in the U$.

3) Announce that due to the unprofitable business climate in Europe, terminate all Europeon business, development, and licensing.

4) Try an SCO, and announce that all the EU's documents made with Office are now MS IP, and that this current usage constitutes license violations, and sue for triple damages.

5) Recode XP and Media Player for XP Reloaded by moving all the graphics and media libraries off into Media Player, and halting work on Longhorn's text console.

[Tamme 0]

Nice info there bastler. I've thought that M$ is pure 'evil' for a long time, but I didn't know it's that dirty.

Besides they make an OS that ie. forces you to install it's own drivers without giving you any choice. I have no control over my computer because of this fucking windows. I can't even watch DVDs because windows won't let me install the right drivers! "Windows has found a better driver for the device C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\cdrom.dll" It doesn't work!

I'll finally get my new HD next weekend and I'll get to install Debian on it. Only downside is that excellent pieces of art like Fallout 2 and OFP won't work, but I can install windows next to it for gaming. That's all it's good for, it's like a gaming console.

EDIT: Isn't Palladium Microsofts project?

[EiZei 0]

Somehow I really dont feel sorry for them after managing to finally install windows xp after 3 failed attempts.

[m21man 0]

How does the EU think it's going to make Microsoft pay anything? Last time I checked, Microsoft was based in the US.

[Longinius 1]

Microsoft has subs in Europe. They can be held liable I reckon, if nothing else works. Further more, its an international and multinational company. They can be taken to court just like anyone else.

[der bastler 0]

I'll finally get my new HD next weekend and I'll get to install Debian on it. Only downside is that excellent pieces of art like Fallout 2 and OFP won't work, but I can install windows next to it for gaming. That's all it's good for, it's like a gaming console.

Dual boot is a solution. But there are traps when you install two OS on one disk.

Because Windows doesn't care about other OS installed on its drive it overwrites the boot sector during installation. Therefore first install Windows and then the additional OS. Disadvantage: When you re-install Windows the boot sector is overwritten again and you can't access your other OS' partitions except you have some kind of other OS floppy disk.

Back then in 1991 my father and I used one 386 --with two HDDs. The HDDs were removeable, i.e. the 3.5" drives were mounted in a special cartridge. Before switching on the computer I had to insert my 100MB drive. Stone-age kind of user switch.

That's a good solution imo: Buy a HDD-Frame, two cartridges and use it to exchange your OS. Insert HDD A, switch on, install Windows, switch off. Insert HDD B, switch on, install other OS, switch off. Now you can use the OS you like by choosing the right HDD before starting the PC.

Pro: No messing around with boot sectors.

Con: You can't exchange files between your OS' (at least Linux can read/write FAT32 and read NTFS partitions)...

I am stingy nowadays. I only own one HDD, therefore I have to mess around with the boot-sector-thingy when I have to reinstall Windows.

[Longinius 1]

Quote[/b] ]Con: You can't exchange files between your OS' (at least Linux can read/write FAT32 and read NTFS partitions)...

Easily solved by getting

1. A CD or DVD burner

2. A memory bird thingie

[EiZei 0]

How does the EU think it's going to make Microsoft pay anything? Last time I checked, Microsoft was based in the US.

Surely they do not desire to piss off the people who control the economy of half of their western customers?

[denoir 0]

How does the EU think it's going to make Microsoft pay anything? Last time I checked, Microsoft was based in the US.

First of all, Europe is a larger market than the US (larger population). So losing Europe as a market would not be acceptable for them.

Second, there are international agreements. If Microsoft would refuse to pay to the EU, Uncle Sam would force them.

And third, as has been pointed out, MS has a large base of operations in Europe.

shinRaiden

Quote[/b] ]MS now has various options:

1) Pay the extortion money. This is better discussed in the "War on terror" thread.

Most likely outcome. They'll also have to make a special, cheaper version of windows with all the extra stuff removed.

Quote[/b] ]

2) Fight it in the courts. Good luck, MS likely won't have nearly the influence$ it had in the U$.

They'll appeal it to death, but I don't think they stand any chance. In the US they have a political lobby to protect them, in the EU is the exactly opposite. I can imagine that part of this has the goal of boosting the EU software industry which is today nothing compared to the US one. But, who knows - it will be appealed and it's quite possible that the higher instances won't agree with the commission's findings. The comission is highly politicized, while the regular EU courts are politically indepenent. So anything is really possible there.

Quote[/b] ]

3) Announce that due to the unprofitable business climate in Europe, terminate all Europeon business, development, and licensing.

And lose half of their income? Nah. 500m € is nothing compared to their income from Europe.

Quote[/b] ]

4) Try an SCO, and announce that all the EU's documents made with Office are now MS IP, and that this current usage constitutes license violations, and sue for triple damages.

Hehe, that would be fun to watch. The problem is however when you're up against a whole system like the EU and you are forced to play after its rules you don't stand a chance. There is nothing that prevents them from changing the rules of the game. Should such intellectual property suits turn out to be possible, you'd see how quickly the parliament would vote to make them retroactivly impossible.

Quote[/b] ]

5) Recode XP and Media Player for XP Reloaded by moving all the graphics and media libraries off into Media Player, and halting work on Longhorn's text console.

Possibly, but that would be bad for everybody.

[der bastler 0]

Quote[/b] ]

4) Try an SCO, and announce that all the EU's documents made with Office are now MS IP, and that this current usage constitutes license violations, and sue for triple damages.

Hehe, that would be fun to watch. The problem is however when you're up against a whole system like the EU and you are forced to play after its rules you don't stand a chance. There is nothing that prevents them from changing the rules of the game. Should such intellectual property suits turn out to be possible, you'd see how quickly the parliament would vote to make them retroactivly impossible.

And: There are many district governments using Microsoft software. Abandon Europe means abandon a save market of business software.

They will pay, but only after some public mourning --and after some years of delay, as they did before...

More interesting: They are forced to open the interfaces of Windows...

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

I belive this is more of a warning from EU to Microsoft and other software developers. You never know what Microsoft will be pumping in thier coming OS unless someone complains.

But on the other hand, i do not see IE and the media player as problems. Alot of novice home users appriciate the fact that they don't have to search around and install all these basic programs. Especially as not every one has Broadband, or internet for that matter.

[der bastler 0]

But on the other hand, i do not see IE and the media player as problems. Alot of novice home users appriciate the fact that they don't have to search around and install all these basic programs. Especially as not every one has Broadband, or internet for that matter.

Funny, years ago novice computer users bought basic programs along with their PCs. Nowadays this seems wrong. Rhetorical question: Why?

[shadow 6]

i do not see IE and the media player as problems. Alot of novice home users appriciate the fact that they don't have to search around and install all these basic programs. Especially as not every one has Broadband, or internet for that matter.

Completely agree.

The majority of pc-users don't even know how to update their IE or Media Player. How are they supposed to know how to download and install a 3rd-party application like that?

By excluding IE and WMP MS is taking a step backwards by making Windows less accessable for the majority of Windows-users which is the majority of PC-users.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

But on the other hand, i do not see IE and the media player as problems. Alot of novice home users appriciate the fact that they don't have to search around and install all these basic programs. Especially as not every one has Broadband, or internet for that matter.

Funny, years ago novice computer users bought basic programs along with their PCs. Nowadays this seems wrong. Rhetorical question: Why?

I see alot of, excuse the expression, complete morons using computers. I do not, by all means have infinite knowledge of computers but i've learnt the basics. These people however do not give a rats ass what their media player looks like. Or what advanced options it has. They are asking questions like "How do you start it" and "does this come with one of those motherboards" Sounds fun, but it is reality. They did not have computers "back then" Or attleast, so it appears.

Just my (terribly spelled :P) opinion.

[kegetys 2]

When an average joe buys a computer, it usually comes with Windows preinstalled. It might as well come with Browser X and Media Player Y also, the end user does not need to have to install anything to be still using a non-microsoft choice.

[shadow 6]

Up untill 2-3 years ago IBM's Aptivas came pre-loaded with both IE and Netscape. Guess what happend?

The customers did'nt know what to use unless they already were acustomed to use one of them from before (and had no knowledge of the other).

Like Kegetys says: simplicity is the key here.

[denoir 0]

It's true in a generic sense, but software is a bit specific. Say you want to buy a new car. Why would you do it?

1) Because your old one is well.. old and doesn't work as it should.

2) There is a much cooler car that you wish to have

Hence a car producer, with a monopoly will always have at least 1). They don't need to improve the cars as people are forced to buy them anyway as their old car breaks down. Hence the monopoly laws.

Software on the other hand does not break down. If you don't like program 2.0, then you stick with 1.0. In that sense, microsoft is its own competitor. To have a cash flow, they need to sell new products. And the only reason people will buy new software is because it is improved in some way. So the monopoly problems aren't as acute.