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Microsoft is not happy

Operating system giant Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) became the first high profile victim of aggressive European Union antitrust enforcement (but it would not be the last).  Slapped with almost $2B USD in fines, the company was lashed for browser bundling and other tactics viewed by the European Commission regulators as anticompetitive.

Microsoft appealed the fine, but the results were less than what it was hoping for.  The appeals body -- the General Court of the European Union announced [PDF] this week its decision to cut the €899M fine to a mere €860M ($1.1B USD), a reduction of €39 (~$48M USD).

A Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters it was "disappointed with the court's ruling."

With the appeals exhausted, it now appears Microsoft will have to pay up to preserve the billions in yearly business it gets from the EU.  The ruling is the latest setback for Microsoft in Europe.  

The company has suffered from plenty of bad PR in Europe in the wake of UK court proceedings which detailed a sexual harassment by managers.  The incident led to several resignations and several civil suits, placing Microsoft squarely in the crosshairs of the EU state's active tabloid industry.

Sources: General Court of the EU [PDF], Reuters


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By arazok on 6/28/2012 9:42:14 AM , Rating: 4
You honestly believe Bill Gates should have gone to jail for bundeling IE in windows?

You’re an idiot. How do you expect to encourage people like Gates, Zukerberg, or Jobs to lead innovative companies if they are constantly fearing jail time for any misstep?


By phazers on 6/28/2012 10:48:03 AM , Rating: 2
"Beenthere" is a known moron who has been chased out of one forum after another all over the web. Nobody pays any heed to his flatulent rantings anymore...

FYI, try using Gmail with IE for any length of time. Google (one of the perpetrators of the EU antitrust action against MS, IIRC) will take 30+ seconds to open up an email, and in the meantime spam you with messages about how much faster it would be using Chrome instead of IE. Since I don't like being forced or cajoled into switching browsers, all this does is encourage me to switch to some other freebie email. While Gmail is certainly not in a market dominating position on PCs, how about Android devices? Maybe MS should countersue now that they are competing in the tablet arena..


By BZDTemp on 6/28/2012 2:00:59 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly how is Android in a dominating market position?


By phazers on 6/28/2012 5:39:38 PM , Rating: 2
Not what I meant - Gmail is the default (dominating) email app on Android devices, not "Android is in a dominating market position"..


By TheJian on 7/1/2012 7:25:04 PM , Rating: 2
AS I said before you can't fight a monopoly without another...LOL. Google is just abusing their search power just like MS does it's OS. If they didn't they'd be dead shortly.

MS has been pulling this crap for ages. Instant mess(A)nger used to change their protocols all the time to keep others from getting messages. Just ask Trillian users...If you paid for that product you endlessly chased the changing Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL changes that were merely made to piss each other off. trillian is still the best IMHO. But MS almost killed them also before courts stopped them from changing weekly. It was not fun being a customer of anyone other than MS. Aol/Yahoo pulled the same crap to match them eventually creating a very crappy experience for end users not to mention coding hell for the others.

Media player...Talk to REAL Player etc...Heck I had to fix a bunch of pc's as tech calls came in because they're Real Player stopped working due to MS changing things intentionally. Don't get me wrong I hate RP, but customers wanted it and caused me headaches unless I could get them off of it...LOL. Exactly what MS wanted me to do. I had no choice if I wanted to stay afloat. I couldn't keep troubleshooting their BS forever when I needed to be building/selling pc's or providing actual troubleshooting for REAL problems instead of ones manufactured by MS to squash competition.


"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." -- Bill Gates











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