[Rob Babcock]

Geez, like a half billion dollar fine and a requirement to remove the media player!  Holy crap, I've been pretty critical of MS's business practices, but what the EU is ording seems outta line even to me.

It seems bizarre to not only force you to sabotage your own product but to also include your competitors products in your bundle!?   Or am I missing something here?

[Woodsea]

In 2 years after all appeals, M$ will still be smelling like a rose, mabe not fresh but certainly not fetid.  I also think that is above and beyond what was called for.  Ordering a product, that is property of a company, not to be placed into a line that is ultimately cohesive to one another is asinine.  Before the internet became what is was, no one would have thought they were part and parcel.  But now a browser and a player are required for a home business or families, friends to communicate.  
I personally have never had a problem with realplayer per say, except  for the layout.  I use Yahoo! not MSN.  I also use  quicktime, which works flawlessly.  Just because there are a bunch of damn asses in opposing states and countries that can't figure out how to download and capitalism, ain't M$'s fault.  
The smart ones either sell-out or bond.  That way we have less incompatibilities.  Look at DVD-A, SACD...Sony is buckling and recognizing DVD-A.

[jackman]

I wonder if the penalty would have been as high if Microsoft was a French or German company?  Actually, I don't wonder, I"m pretty sure there would be no penalty at all.  

J

[John Casler]

While that sounds like a lot of dough, it is not a big deal to Microsoft.

In fact, one of my former clients (Michael Milken) was "fined" personally somewhere around $500,000,000 to $600,000,000 as an "individual"    and he is still feeding his pooch and not collecting aluminum cans  

At the time, it was darn close to the fine for the Exxon Valdez disaster fine.

[ooheadsoo]

While there is some call to be suspicious of success, some people out there are just so anti success, it's ridiculous.  Their idea of protecting the rights of the consumers is just too extreme.

[Hantra]

Let's see if I can sum up the EU's talking points:

We believe that Microsoft is being unfair, and hurting consumers via the following:

- Inclusion of a great product for free that a consumer could EASILY pay $30 for.  (any time our consumers can pay for something that is free, we prefer that they do so b/c we make VAT, and all kinds of extra money)

- Making it too easy, and making their product TOO interoperable by using a media player that is too compatible with the software that 99.9799% of EU users already own.  (We need LESS compatible software in order to create jobs for all these out of work IT people)

- Consumers would benefit more by paying the $30, and downloading an inferior program, trying like hell to install it and make it work with their PC's, making a few phone calls to another company's PAID support line, and eventually not being able to even view the content they want to see. (Microsoft is taking food from the mouths of help desk workers, and making it possible for consumers to view any content they want to view at any time.  This convenience will NOT STAND!)

In short, we believe that consumers have been short-changed and intend to rectify the situation even if it takes running it in them a little deeper.  

[Rob Babcock]

Should we all chip in and send MS some flowers?   It seems funny all of us sticking up for them (given some of the software they've subjected us to over the years!), but I truly think they're getting screwed.  I suppose the anti-American sentiment is a big part of it, and also some jealousy.  MS has had some shady practices at times, but for the most part they just flat out built the better mousetrap.  Now that Windows runs most of the worlds PCs, now that the "battle" is over, NOW the EU wants to hobble their OS.  The very OS that everyone is pretty much "stuck with."

And I'm pretty happy to be stuck with XP- I think it's easily MS's best.  It's really stable on my PC, and loaded with features I like.  It's very hard to comprehend how consumers would benefit, as Hantra said, but foisting some competitors product off on that at an additional charge and then try to say it's "for our protection."

Last I checked, just because somethings bundled doesn't mean you have to use it.  There are lots of people who don't use IE, I don't see MS kicking their door down in the middle of the night.  Ditto for Windows media player.

The EU can stick it up their arse as far as I'm concerned.  

[JoshK]

John,

Michael Milken was your client?!  I would love to have met him.  Father of junk bonds and all.   Didn't he have to serve some jail time too?  


Honestly, what the EU did to MS has some overhanging affects but is a mild slap on the wrist to MS.  What is more interesting is whether MS will get their way with the blue laser media.  That will be far more important in five years from now.

[Ferdi]

hi guys, this is getting a bit close to politics but lets give it a try:

I have not read everything, but I believe the crux is not that MS is giving away their mediaplayer but that they are abusing their economic power. Against specifically this, there are laws in the EU and these have been applied.

As for European companies not getting fined, not true. There are many examples of companies getting fined by the EU competition police, most of them European. I remember Tetrapak from university law but every few months there will be a case big enough to make the papers. This is in fact the first American company I can remember to get fined.

Groeten,

Ferdi

[DVV]

Not up to me, but if it was, I'd take the middle ground - MS should be told to offer two possibilities to the customer: one cheaper, without the incriminated "add-ons", and another, costlier, with everything as is. And the fine should lose one zero at least.

I ssume they went for "proportionate fine" system. Briefly, for the same wrongdoing, a company making $1 million will be fined say $10K (1%), but a company making $100 million will be fined $1 million (again 1%). The reason is that because the smaller company was smaller, the actual damage it could have made is smaller than that of the 100 times larger company, also assumed to have more of better lawyers (my addition to the theory of law).

God knows I all but like Microsoft, but that's no reason to squeeze them that hard. However, it seems to me that they are simply too big, and are slowly but surely squeezing everybody else out. This reminds me of a case I read about some 25 years ago or so; since I'm playing this back from memory, forgive possible inaccuracies.

IBM went to court charging Amdahl (I think they are gone now) for illegally copying their in/out port standards on their mainframes. The case was submitted to the International commercial court of Geneva. IBM lost. Amidst all hell which had broken lose, somebody asked the judge how come.

His answer was that by strict law, IBM should have won the case. However, if they did win, the court would have in fact granted them world monopoly (in those days, IBM was shoving everybody else out of the business by changing i/o protocols every now and then, and in those days, if you weren't compatible with IBM, you were dead). Thus, one small justice would sanctify a far great injustice, and no man of law could ever willingly do that.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Cheers,
DVV

[DVV]

Oh yeah, and Ferdi is quite right. 95%+ of the time, it's European companies who get to pay heavy fines.

The last time was when a gang of auto manufacturers (VW and Ford from Germany, Peugeot and Citroen from France and FIAT from Italy) had to pay a fine and back off or face a still stiffer fine for overcharging of "original spare parts", all of which came from the same factories in Turkey as did the "bogus" ones. A comprehensive test showed no difference, except in the color of the packaging and a 3 times and over price hike.

For the baffled, Ford of Germany, although of course a subsidirary of USA's own Ford of Detroit, is thought of as local in Europe. Just as GM's subsidiary Opel is thought of as a German company rather that a US company (and it was indeed an old German company before GM bought them out).

And those same guys, plus just about every other manufacturer of cars in the EU, are facing yet more charges of malpractice with fines running into BILLIONS all told because of price fixing. It turns out that the same car, sold on what's supposed to be a single market, can in fact cost 40% more in one country than in another (cheapest in Denmark, so Germans hopped over to Denmark to buy their BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz autos ). And 40% is no laughing matter, especially not when that starts sounding like $10,000 extra for the car. I don't remember the exact figures, but I thin EU allows for a maximum of 5% difference, due to greater transportation costs, etc.

Not one home-grown US manufacturer is on that list, although their subsidiaries are. Every single European car manufacturer is on that list, except the Russians (Volga, GAZ, Moskvitch, Lada), Serbia (Yugo, but I don't know if those guys are even alive) and Turkey.

But then, those are not EU countries.

Cheers,
DVV

[John Casler]

John,

Michael Milken was your client?!  I would love to have met him.  Father of junk bonds and all.   Didn't he have to serve some jail time too?  

Yes, he did have to go to "camp" as we called it.  Jail or prison was not a word we used when refering to his incarceration.

He was there over two years.  

Yeah a facinating guy and if you met him on the street you would have no idea of what was inside that brain.

Nice enough fellow, and I worked with him, much of his staff, and family over a 5-6 year period, beginning a couple months before he left for "camp".

I always found it amazing that he had such amazing resources, that he had a fine levied against him personally, that was almost equal to that which was levied against Exxon one of the nations largest corporations.

Now that is BIG TIME!!!

The stories I could tell,   since I worked with him and most of his key staff.

[JoshK]

fascinating.

To put some things in perspective, with all due respect to Mr. Milken, what he did was easily 10 times worse than Mrs. Stewart's flub.

[Hantra]

If I was Bill Gates, I'd just say "OK, no problemo, we will pull all of our EU product, and all EU resources.  Everyone working for MS in the EU is now fired, and no more shipments of Microsoft software are to be shipped to EU, and if they find their way in, there will be a clause in the licensing agreement that makes them illegal copies because they are operating inside the EU.

You want hegemony, and monopoly abuse?  You got it.  Bastards.

Screw the EU.  They can develop their own happy OS.  OSEU 1.0  haha. .

[EchiDna]

Personally I think the EU is the only governmental organisation thus far prepared to stand up to M$. C'mon you must admit that Microsoft appears to be anti competition and protectionist nobody can be THAT blind.

Can you imagine the US Government saying to Bill Gates? big corporations are the governments of today and BG has at least the influence of 'Dubbya' IMHO. Is this a good thing? many people would say no it isn't and thus we all have anti monopoly laws to protect the rights of the consumer to chice and the rights of the smaller commercial player to exist.

[ooheadsoo]

Every top gear company is anti competition.  What dog eat dog company wants competition?  They want success in a limited market and the less sharks in the pool, the more for themselves.  Government should only step in when what the company is doing is hurting the consumer.  I don't feel this is the case for Microsoft.

[Smeggy]

Personally I don't think this is a case of sticking up for MS, this is sticking up for ourselves as we're the ones getting screwed by their (EU's) stupid decisions. Realplayer?!? Why not just stick a damn virus in there while they're at it. I friggin hate Realplayer! Jerkoffs    

What me bitter?