Microsoft Fined €561 Million For Non-compliance With EU Browser Settlement 401
Seeteufel writes "Microsoft's failure to comply with an antitrust settlement about browser choice has severe consequences. The European Commissioner for Competition Almunia set a fine of €561 million (~$732 million) for the unprecedented break of agreement. Microsoft admitted its mistakes and offered further concessions."
A pretty costly bug it seems. From the EC press release: "This is the first time that the Commission has had to fine a company for non-compliance with a commitments decision. In the calculation of the fine the Commission took into account the gravity and duration of the infringement, the need to ensure a deterrent effect of the fine and, as a mitigating circumstance, the fact that Microsoft has cooperated with the Commission and provided information which helped the Commission to investigate the matter efficiently."
Beginning to feel sorry for Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even as a Microsoft hater of old, I'm beginning to feel sorry for MS. For sure, 15 years ago they were engaged in monopoly abuse to advantage IE. But these days, IE itself is on the way out. WebKit based browsers are the clear majority these days. And neither Apple nor Google have to offer users of their systems a choice of browser.
It must really rub salt in the wound to have a statutory obligation to offer alternatives to their minority browser.
Re:Mean while in america (Score:5, Interesting)
Has a fine like this *ever* been paid in the U.S. though in actuality?
It either gets fed to the appeals system which reduces it or ties the payment up for so long it's meaningless or it gets ignored and forgotten.
I can't remember one example of a company just paying the fine and moving on, actually. Does someone else here remember anything like this?
what about the windows RT lock down and the win 8 (Score:5, Interesting)
what about the windows RT lock down and the win 8 app store how will that go under EU rules?
Re:Can't believe their arrogance (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeaah that would be great!
Maybe we would see some development into Linux instead.
Re:Can't believe their arrogance (Score:5, Interesting)
You're generally wrong. A few years back, having failed countless times to get my mom off IE, I swapped the IE and Firefox icons on her desktop. As far as she can tell, she's still using the "blue e" to "go on the internet". I've had to use the very same trick on my mother-in-law and aunt (no sexism intended). The same applies to renaming "Libre/OpenOffice Writer" to Word, etc... To them, internet == blue e; bookmark manager == postit notes; lightweight text editor == MS Word
And there's NOTHING anyone can do about it! Ever!