Microsft judegement upheld!

[Smeggle]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0917/microsoft.html?rss

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The European Court of Justice has upheld an EU Commission finding that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the computer market.

In its ruling this morning, the Court backed the Commission's decision in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in server and software products.

Microsoft dominates the software market, with some 90% of personal computers running Microsoft products. However, it has been accused of breaking competition law by abusing that dominance to force out rivals.



In 2004, after a five-year investigation, the European Commission ruled that it was guilty of such abuse by refusing to supply competitors with software code that would allow their server products to work properly with Windows.

It also said Microsoft attempted to dominate the emerging market for media players by tying its Windows Media Player to the Windows PC operating system.

The commission fined Microsoft a record €497m, and last year added a further €280m fine for refusing to comply with the original ruling.

Microsoft says the ruling was wrong and launched a legal challenge.

The stakes for both parties were huge: the Commission faced a big blow to its credibility as a regulator if it lost, while the loss for Microsoft will add to pressure for more regulatory action to contain the software giant.

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Good! It's about time someone stood up to them!

[WelshBoy]

Farce of a ruling tbh.

Why should MS reveal it's code to people?

As for the Media Player bit, what difference did it make? Did it mean you couldn't use other media players? No.
It was a free piece of software MS bundled in with the OS.

MS are being picked on because they're seen as a popular target.

[Mr Jones]

It's a sad old state of affairs when a load of old establishment judges decide what you can and can't do in business.

It's the core value of any business out there to be the biggest and most dominant force in your particular market, and if you achieve that then good for you because no doubt you've put the man hours and big bucks into it to get there.

The company I work for owns massive massive market shares in many countries around the world, market leader in 15 of those countries, we got there through hard work and a lot of expense, I'd be pretty pissed off is someone told us we couldn't go about our business beacuase 'we already have too much of the market and it isn't fair on the little guys, you should share some of your product secrets with the others so they can catch up', fuck off in the real world that dosn't happen!

If 90% of personal PC's run Windows ask yourself why that is? where was the competition over the last 20 years or so when windows was being developed and deployed.

If someone else wants a piece of that 90%, then get on and earn it, invest the millions required to develop it, do the years worth of promotion, be aggressive in placing your product, don't sit back, cry about it and expect someone to hand it to you on a plate.

[zootm]

A lot of this is down to existing laws not being able to deal with modern business or technology. They're certainly guilty of business abuses in the past, but a lot of the things they were found guilty of by the commission are essentially just misunderstanding.

[TheElusiveMelon]

I can't believe a lot of it was based on WMP! So what, you can't give out free and useful programs with operating systems anymore. They'll be after them for Solitare and Sound Recorder net.

Its not like WMP stops anything else from working. Sure, i downloaded Winamp and used that instead, but more a lot of people, WMP does the job fine, so why should they have to bother downloading it.

[Bilbo Baggins]

Originally posted by Smeggle
Good! It's about time someone stood up to them!

What for exactly? (Jones pretty much covers my view on this).

[Omega X]

Meh, saw it coming. Its only 605 Million, they can afford it.

[shakey_snake]

As free-market oriented as I am, I usually favor non-ridiculous anti-trust suits.

It was pressure from this investigation that forced MS to roll-out the "set program access and default" with xpsp1, wasn't it? Do you guys remember what a pain-in-the-arse it was to vanquish WMP pre-SP1?

(wow, so many hyphens)

[zootm]

Pressure from the investigation, sure. Many of the things that they continue to be charged of are laughable, however. Fining companies even when they comply to your (extremely vague) wishes is no incentive for them to comply.

[mikm]

I agree with Jones.

Just out of curiosity, does anybody knows what would happen if Microsoft said "bite me" and refused to comply?

[Omega X]

Originally posted by mikm
I agree with Jones.

Just out of curiosity, does anybody knows what would happen if Microsoft said "bite me" and refused to comply?

A Ma'Bell-like breakup? The end of WMP? Multiple fines causing Chapter 11? OSX dominance? Linux dominance? Suicidal IT departments? Bill Gates dangling his children over balconies?

[zootm]

I think they could be made to stop trading in the EU, and little else.

[Widdykats]

Originally posted by Omega X
A Ma'Bell-like breakup? The end of WMP? Multiple fines causing Chapter 11? OSX dominance? Linux dominance? Suicidal IT departments? Bill Gates dangling his children over balconies?

ahehehehe You dreamer, you!

[rockouthippie]

If 90% of personal PC's run Windows ask yourself why that is? where was the competition over the last 20 years or so when windows was being developed and deployed.

Crushed by some rather unfair trade practices that the EU is addressing with this suit. It's obvious that the MS success story certainly wasn't driven by having the best products. MS is so embedded into the desktop market that even this suit is a mere speed bump to this steamroller.

Not only should MS be broken up by invoking anti-trust legislation, it should have happened 10 years ago.

[zootm]

Can you name a better desktop product which runs on commodity hardware? Especially for the (even recent) past.

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by rockouthippie
Crushed by some rather unfair trade practices that the EU is addressing with this suit. It's obvious that the MS success story certainly wasn't driven by having the best products. MS is so embedded into the desktop market that even this suit is a mere speed bump to this steamroller.

Not only should MS be broken up by invoking anti-trust legislation, it should have happened 10 years ago.

I refer you back to my first comment...

It's the core value of any business out there to be the biggest and most dominant force in your particular market, and if you achieve that then good for you because no doubt you've put the man hours and big bucks into it to get there.

In other news, I hear Coca Cola is quite popular and holds quite a market share, should they be the subject of anti trust?, does Pepsi demand a slice of the Coke pie?

[rockouthippie]

No, but the reason isn't that MS created the best products. MS and Intel gained most of it's market share during a period when almost anything else was better.

Does the MS monopoly advance the state of the art in desktop computing or retard it? I think it's the latter.

You can have a Coke or a Pepsi. You can have Windows or nothing.

[Schmeet]

Here's an interesting article from a commentator on Apple's business practices.

I think he makes some good points.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7002612.stm

[Omega X]

I don't even think that the BBC needed a story about this. Apple's time in the monopoly spotlight has been a LONG time coming.

This Microsoft thing might be just the motivation needed to slap them back.

[Smeggle]

What folk need to realize that this actually goes back as far as 1998. Also that European law and US law especially in areas such as the behemoth that Microsoft has become is very different.

I'm often accused of giving out about Microsoft but that is a bit unfair really considering I work with there systems daily. I think windows for what it is, is an amazing system and it's only real competitor for being user friendly is Apple/Mac. Linux may be what it is but until it can become as user friendly as either of the two mentioned then it will never be a mainstream product irrespective of the gains it has made in the last 12months or so.

The main problem here is Microsoft refusing to release code so as to enable other systems to be inter-operative. It is that reason that has caused this finding. Had they worked to help be more supportive towards this area, then what happened in Europe would not have, quite simply.

There recent attempt to steam roll the ISO standard? They've tried this before and failed miserably (Against the W3C with that awful mess MSHTML). They were given the chance to remove WMP from European versions. Did they do that? No they used a surreptitious move and placed an ELUA that you had to agree to before you could use it. But the software was still there. It was still on and part of the system.

From what I see, the commission has been kinda lenient up to now in this. The point here is that, and not just Microsoft, Linux and Apple/Mac don't just produce an operating system. They produce a complete package and they also make it as hard as possible for those packages to be able to communicate with each other.

This is why third party software is always having problems, some to the point of not being able to function as intended. Mind some shouldn't be allowed near a system in the first place, granted.

However, what should be happening is that these companies should be producing separate entities. They first should produce an operating system with the ability to explore the areas of that system. After that any thing else, Internet Browser, Security Package, Instant Messenger, Image Manipulation, Audio, Video software etc etc should be totally stand alone products.

Yes, fair enough, each company should be allowed to offer there version of those products but they should be as easily installed/un-installed as any other program. Try uninstalling WMP and see what happens. Try it with Internet Explorer? and then try putting it back? Your very quickly going to be hitting problems and serious issues at that, to the point where you have to do a complete system install!

One of the major problems with Windows is that every thing and I mean every thing is set to 'Default Allow'. From a security point of view and especially with the amount of idiots that abound on the Internet these days that is so inherently wrong as to be ludicrous. I mean, windows explorer? What the hell does that need to access the internet for? Absolutely no reason what so ever. And that is only one of many and probably one of the most serious flaws in windows.

At least in this regards Linux does fair some what better though as has been seen in the last 12 months Apple is probably on par with Windows in this regard.

It is issues like this and we have not even began to get to the issue of there refusal to allow server communication with any form of interoperability. This is seen as trying to own a part of a market at the expense of others. Making it impossible for any competitor to be able to produce compatible software.

The analogy above of Pepsi and Coke is actually a good one in that neither of those companies set out to harm each other and in fact last year when one was offered company documents actually helped recover them for the opposing company! They don't try to crush all competitors because they know that would be non - beneficial to them. Microsoft on the other hand have used every thing they can to crush any out sider, any competition.

They have even now taken to remove perfectly safe (And better) third party security products. Try installing Windows Live Protection suite when you have AVG on your computer. Bye Bye AVG! It will uninstall it.

Last couple of days I've been sorting out a vista machine. All I can sy is what a nightmare. The only way I could get the wifi to work was to rename the ssid! What about the registry value that blocks certain routers? The list is endless....

ok I'll shut up now