EU Court Upholds Microsoft Antitrust Fines 126
a_n_d_e_r_s writes "The ongoing saga of Microsoft's misuse of their dominant position in the EU marketplace to block competitors may be finally over, with the fine set to 860 million euros (just over 1 billion dollars). In 2004 Microsoft was ordered to provide certain information to competitors but failed to do so and was given an hefty fine. Now the EU General Court in Luxembourg has upheld the EU Commission decision and ruled against Microsoft."
This is a minor reduction (4.3%) of the original fine because of a minor technicality. Microsoft, naturally, is unhappy with the result.
EU bailout (Score:2, Funny)
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Sadly the amount of money the EU is p*ssing away/conjuring into existance at the moment would bankrupt Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Google combined.
**Sigh**
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Hey, that made me think of something...maybe Microsoft should pay in their worthless ass currency, the Euro. It's funny until you realize, I think the fine is in Euros rofl. Perhaps this is a conspiracy to drive up the cost of the Euro. MS holds primarily USD so if they had to convert a bunch to Euros, it would drive the price up. Yeah, the lawsuit started before the Euro was in trouble but still, I'm sure the recent problems didn't help the case be operated any less crookedly.
What make you think that Microsoft doesn't have 860 million Euros already? They take payments in Europe. If I were them I would have been revenue from European operations into a bank account for years. All they have to due is write the check.
Re:EU bailout (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, how horrible of a European court to exact a fine in European currency. This is almost on par with Iran allowing trading oil in other currencies than US dollars!
Re:EU bailout (Score:5, Insightful)
Rubbish.
Microsoft has been a predatory ruthless monopolist in all jurisdictions they trade in.
If it wasn't for lobbying/bribes, they'd have been prosecuted in just about every country in the world.
They got away with it in the US. (Score:4, Informative)
They were charged guilty by the highest court in the US... and nothing.
Microsoft just complained that it was hard to comply and dragged their feet. The US did nothing. No fine, no nothing, until it reached stature of limitation. Then Microsoft, a convicted criminal, got off the hook without even a slap on the wrist.
In that aspect, The EU was much smarter. They gave Microsoft time to fix their stuff, and when that time expired, without Microsoft doing anything, they started fining 1 000 000 euro for every additional day of non-compliance. That is where the 980 000 000 euro fine is coming from.
Microsoft is not the only case like this.
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According to Wikipedia, the total amount is even more than that.
500 million (euro) - original fine from 2004
280 million - non-compliance fine from 2006
900 million - one more non-compliance fine from 2008
So the grand total is over 1.5 billion euro.
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"Other than gamers and office workers..."
Seems like a pretty large section of the populace to dismiss! They may be the only ones upgrading computers on a frequent basis, but I've noticed they are the only ones even using computers AT ALL anymore.
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Actually, the EU has a history going after foreign companies in order to promote/protect EU companies. Read up the the wine wars. The EU was downplaying US and Australian wines to promote European wines. Even after the EU wine judges were picking the US and Australian wines as the better wines. Now if the US was to do something similar, the EU would be suing the US.
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Try looking at ongoing cartel and anti-trust cases inthe Commission's official case database [europa.eu].
Of course, DSD, Europay, Scandlines Sverige, Ã-sterreichische Banken and similar companies are all as genuinely American as one can be.
Re:EU bailout (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is that the EU courts do nothing domestically, but boy, when they see a US company, it is no holds barred
Bullshit. The largest antitrust fine to date [nabarro.com]: €992M, on a cartel of lift makers within the EU. The difference is that the myopic US press doesn't bother covering anything other than fines on US companies, so you don't hear about them.
Re:EU bailout (Score:4, Informative)
The largest antitrust fine to date [nabarro.com]: €992M, on a cartel of lift makers within the EU.
Bullshit. The largest antitrust fine to date [nytimes.com]: €1.06B, was on Intel, for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market.
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It should be noticed that this is only if you count fines alone. If you count the fine, plus the penalty for not paying it in time, MS has racked up 1.5 billion euro, according to Wikipedia.
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Rubbish (Score:3)
Astra Zeneca (a UK company) are up for 50 million euros.
Telefonica (Spanish) are up for 150 million euros.
Examples are not hard to find....
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So Neelie Kroes' local reputation of being utterly brutal on local monopolies and totally unjustified?
What exactly are you smoking? She's been known as someone brutal enough to take on any monopoly that tries to play against competitiveness, and done so long before microsoft. They're not even on her "first ten" list of big companies to get hit hard.
Re:EU bailout (Score:5, Informative)
How does that work when the Euro is currently worth 25% more than the US Dollar?
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It used to be worth 60% more than the US Dollar was, and that was before the value of the Dollar tanked.
Re:EU bailout (Score:4, Informative)
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It never was. The highest ever recorded rate was on Jul 7 2008, when the dollar was at a low of 1.5893 per euro. The dollar dropped below 1:1.50 again in Oct and Nov 2010 for a short period.
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Well, it used to be roughly 1:1 when the Euro came into existence. Before 9/11 and shortly after it was even up to about 0.7:1 in the other direction.
It's true that the EUR:USD rate used to be 0.67:1 for a while before 2008, though, but I guess we're more looking at an attempt to get "down" to the dollar to spur exports. The times before the "crisis" (funny, though, how I can't really see anything remotely close to a crisis in my country...) were actually very bad for our exports due to a very, very highly
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It was specifically set to less then 1:1 to USD as a "magical standard", so that when inevitable value increase would come as currency got adopted more widely, it would function as a great balancer of two biggest economic zones. It would also promote tourism and cross-continental payments as it would be easier to evaluate how much you would be paying when buying across the Atlantic.
Unfortunately US economy tanked and currency devalued more then expected by economists setting up the euro.
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While true, the more interesting part is how currencies develop towards each other. A "strong" currency will become more valuable to another one over time, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Quite frankly, the European central bank was pretty much forced to crank up the printing presses because the US did. Funny as it may sound at first, the very last thing you want is an overly strong currency. Sure, you can easily buy anything you want on the international market because your denaros buy a lot of
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Well, it's still nothing compared to the US conjuration program, e.g. I think the Feds call it Quantitative Easing, right?
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No, Germany is.
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By that you mean how big a loan they want to take out?
Why should the Germans be paying your bills?
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Perhaps because they deliberately enlarged the EU through letting in countries that they *knew* could not meet the conditions as it suited Germany to have a larger market for their goods (and therefore their economy). Germany then was the first country to throw away the rules when *they* could not stick to them as a result of the cost of re-unification.
To summarise. Germany benefitted from the previous situation despite the risks. Now they get to pay the bill.
Re:EU bailout (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. Germany had not much say back then about the EU. France pressed Germany to let everybody and their dog in as a condition for the reunification.
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1. The French and the rest pushed to let in the unqualified.
2. the Russians should have born some of the cost of reunification, or maybe the rest of the EU should have chipped in.
Either way Germany forced no one to join, and now those same nations want loans and bailouts.
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If they dont pay up, they can be barred from trading in Europe
Yeah, good luck switching to Linux, Europe. Or maybe you could go Apple. They would CERTAINLY never abuse their monopoly over you.
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Does Apple have a real server anymore? I see a single CPU (up to 12 cores) or the mini server. Most people I know would call either machine a big server. Eight memory slots is not a lot. For a workstation is it fine (the apple Mac Pro). When we have people requiring 500GB of RAM and 48 cores minimum (usually they go a lot higher on the server ordered), Apple is lacking.
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Uhhuh! Let's ponder this for a moment and then have a good laugh.
The logical consequence is that MS doesn't sell software in Europe anymore. Now, please name one at least halfway sizable company that can get around MS, be it because of OS or Office package. Sad as it may be, we're entirely dependent on that crap.
And MS knows that damn well, and they know the EU will not put the hammer down in this case.
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Uhhuh! Let's ponder this for a moment and then have a good laugh.
The logical consequence is that MS doesn't sell software in Europe anymore. Now, please name one at least halfway sizable company that can get around MS, be it because of OS or Office package. Sad as it may be, we're entirely dependent on that crap.
And MS knows that damn well, and they know the EU will not put the hammer down in this case.
Actually, out of all the applications you could have picked to make this argument sound, you picked the worst set of applications to support your point.
Operating Systems and Office packages are flooded markets with alternatives, and the alternatives are good enough that nobody has notice I haven't been using MS Word or MS Excel for the past eight years.
The real sticking points is the "business applications" which are cobbled together bits of code that generally aren't well maintained. Since they aren't wel
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EU is currently the biggest and most profitable market for MS by a decent margin. Any CEO suggesting this would hold his office for approximately as long as it takes for big stock holders to make the necessary calls to have him committed to nearest asylum and decision cancelled on count of "nervous breakdown under heavy stress".
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Nice selective statistics there. Now move the left limit of the graph all the way to the left, and look again.
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Only a few orders of magnitude off there champ. Hint: here on slashdot people typically understand math beyond "what's a million and how is different from bazillion?"
"Microsoft, naturally, is unhappy with the result" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mod parent up. It's a couple of month's profit for Microsoft. Spread it over eight years and it's not a bad investment.
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Because banks never go broke, right?
Completely riskless, never in all of history has a depositor lost their money
Re:"Microsoft, naturally, is unhappy with the resu (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has to report that they're unhappy with the result. They have to whine and complain. If they didn't, it wouldn't be seen as sufficient punishment.
Re:"Microsoft, naturally, is unhappy with the resu (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's competitors and consumers aren't too happy with the result either. I'm sure they would have preferred that MS not have engaged in such practices in the first place.
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You fucking freedom hating commie! You shouldn't be allowed to post such things! There should be some congressional committee to subpoena you or something.
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According to the Sherman Antitrust Act monopolies are not bad. In fact we have several of them (post office, amtrak, the electric company). Monopolies are only bad when they abuse their power, as defined by the act.
As for "economic notions", in a truly free market no monopoly lasts forever because new competitors rise-up and take it away. I think we're witnessing that now, as Microsoft has lost its 90s and early 2000s monopoly over browers and OSes. They have to share the spotlight with Mozilla, Google,
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As for "economic notions", in a truly free market no monopoly lasts forever because new competitors rise-up and take it away.
The thing is, because they can prevent exactly that, that's why monopolies are generally considered an undesirable side-effect of free market. A sufficiently big actor can actively prevent a new entrant inside a market. If it was not forbidden, Microsoft would be forbidding OpenOffice and LibreOffice to run under windows, would prevent any other browser than IE and any other web search engine than Bing. Things are even worse in fields where there is a huge initial investment to enter the market.
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Waiting to see if Apple gets the same treatment. After all Apple is in the dominant position in the tablet market. Many would say the smartphone and mp3 markets as well. Apple even gets courts to block other companies from bringing in a competing product. Is that not considered abuse? Even Apple has said that the ipod/iphone sales have lead to higher Apple computer sales.
I have every confidence that... (Score:1)
...here in the United Kingdom both central and local government will consider this ruling and act in the manner which they consider appropriate;
So they will make absolutely no effort consider alternative suppliers and reward Microsoft with more lucrative contracts for software and services.
secure boot uefi (Score:1, Troll)
Re:secure boot uefi (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:secure boot uefi (Score:5, Interesting)
UEFI isn't a Microsoft technology, but feel free to try and prove that an open consortium has a monopoly and abused it somehow.
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UEFI is full of Wintel-isms, and Microsoft is right along Intel at the top of the stack in terms of people making design decisions with respect to how UEFI functions. Microsoft has shown it is willing to abuse its position (or the positions of others) in consortiums and standards bodies to get their way (see the OOXML debacle.)
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to find out that they leveraged their position to muck up the key management process in UEFI explicitly so that it functions the way we curren
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Assuming that there genuinely were hoping to encourage competition to Microsoft products then that result would help them even more with their goal.
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Yes and no. Certainly a price hike would make competing products more attractive, but not everyone will abandon MS products. It would raise the overall cost of software in Europe in the areas in which Microsoft plays. If I'm a MS competitor who isn't giving away his stuff for free, and MS raises prices by 25%, my optimal price point is probably not "exactly what I'm charging right now". It's somewhere between "what I'm charging right now" and "25% more than what I'm charging right now".
It would foster c
Good to see (Score:4, Interesting)
Europe acting on anti-trust type of actions on big companies. I remember a time when the U.S. did that and we had decades of prosperity. Ah the good old prosperous days of the 50's and 60's with 90% top tax rate.
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Yeah, shame that John Kennedy had to go and spoil that by lowering taxes, wasn't it?
Re:Good to see (Score:4, Interesting)
Anytime a U.S. president gets shot he becomes sainted and we refuse to acknowledge the horrible things he's done. Getting shot is like automatic sainthood for a U.S. President (thank God Reagan survived his assassination attempt - imagine that moron as a martyr).
Kennedy got us involved in Vietnam. Lincoln was personally responsible for more American deaths than any person/country/army. No one (aside from history buffs) knows much about McKinley or Garfield but they have a surprising amount of buildings and whatnot named after them for do-nothing presidents.
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knows much about McKinley or Garfield but they have a surprising amount of buildings and whatnot named after them for do-nothing presidents.
Wasn't Garfield the one who loved lasagna?
Considering the massive fuck-ups we've seen out of the office of the President, perhaps managing to get through an entire term in office without any notable scandals is in itself, praiseworthy?
Where does this money go? (Score:3)
What info was Microsoft supposed to provide? (Score:2)
Can anyone point me to something indicating what information the EU feels Microsoft should have provided but did not provide? (or information competitors of Microsoft believe Microsoft should have provided but did not provide?)
The spec documents at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd208104(v=prot.10) [microsoft.com] seem to cover a lot of the things that competitors might want access to so whats missing?
I'm wondering (Score:2)
When Microsoft will increase the software licensing fees for EU organizations.......
Need some new ones (Score:2)
UEFI boot comes to mind, just off the top of my head.
Pay up (Score:2)
In related news... (Score:2)
...Microsoft is still unlikely to pay the reduced fine. A Microsoft spokesman was quoted as saying "Awww, the widdle EU antitrust court thinks it can fine us. Isn't that just precious?"
Re:Microsoft is proving EU with a bailout (Score:5, Informative)
The verdict was handed down in 2004. It's the appeal where Microsoft managed to reduce the fine by about 30 Mio €.
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Inflation will have reduced the fine by a lot more in 8 years.
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If this was a speeding ticket it would have at least 100% in fees and interest added. Microsoft made money on the appeal, more in just interest than the lawyers got paid.
That said the EU could do some REAL HARM if they string armed the money in the next 30 days. That would upset the decision makers enough to bungle all the Win8 launches.
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Wow, that is a chunk of change - the EU could really use the money right now too (conspiracy ???). This could pay for the bailouts being debated right now throughout the EU.
The fine is 860 million euros. The Spanish banks are getting up to 100 billion euros. [bbc.co.uk] The Irish got some 60 billion euros, Greece has gotten several hundred billions so far. These 860 million euros are chump change in comparison.
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Really?
Are you literally 'forced' into buying MicroSoft Software when buying a new PC in the mainstream dealers? Can you buy a PC/Laptop (without going through a large number of hoops) from the likes of Dell, HP etc without Windows? Do you have a choice?
Yes you have a choice. Dell has sold Ubuntu laptops. Hp has sold WebOs. I believe that both have made Android devices... and ChromeOS devices. If you don't want a Windows device you can buy one of those.
Furthermore, there are lots of other companies you didn't list. Why not buy a Linux PC from System76. Do as Richard Stallman does and buy a Lemote.
Windows never had a monopoly because there have always been alternatives. The fact is that there is no public demand for alternatives aside from Apple. Tha
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Yes you have a choice. Dell has sold Ubuntu laptops. Hp has sold WebOs. I believe that both have made Android devices... and ChromeOS devices. If you don't want a Windows device you can buy one of those.
My Dell desktop machine here is a n-series, which means it didn't come with any OS at all[*].
There is no way to buy an Apple without Apple's OS, on the other hand. Nor a way to buy third party compatibles.
As for monopoly, Apple's marketshare in several business segments is large enough to be affected by anti-monopoly legislation. They're not above the law of the countries they decide to sell in.
[*]: It came with a FreeDOS CD because the law prohibits OS vendors from penalizing someone for selling a comp
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Apple represent approx 10% of the PC market.
How much of the tablet and phone market do they represent?
MS will be in for more trouble if they stop no MS Software from running on hardware that is produced by other makers when Windows 8 comes out. Apple don't stop you from installing Windows or Linux on their Hardware.
I have no idea what that first sentence even means. But MS has never stopped you from installing anything you want in Windows, either. And no PC maker has ever stopped anyone from installing an alternate OS. The only company that does this is Apple--which stopped you from installing an alternate OS before bootcamp, stops you from installing OS X on anything other than Apple hardware, and stops you from installing non-App-Store software on any iOS dev
Re:Go after Apple! (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple are the worst offenders and is the most anti-competitive company in the industry, they're worse than Microsoft.
Totally!!
Well, except for the fact that they have nothing approaching a monopoly in any industry in which they operate and consumers have the easy choice to go with alternatives should they dislike Apple's offerings whereas Microsoft had ~95% of the desktop market at the time the anti-trust cases occurred (and still have ~90% of the market).
Other than that, you're right - totally worse than Microsoft. ...