EU Convinces Microsoft To Begin Stalling Process
from the well,-of-course dept
By this point, it's almost not worth commenting on, but as has been talked about in the press for the last few weeks, the European Commission formally released their statement on Microsoft violating anti-trust laws. The "remedies" are exactly what was predicted earlier this week: opening up their APIs, offering a version of Windows sans the media player and paying about $600 million. Microsoft will whine and complain and appeal and stall and who knows where this will all end up. Update: News.com is running a full package of stories about the decisions - because why read one story on this decision when you can read nine. One interesting one, though, is the suggestion that Microsoft should turn this into a political thing about Europeans trying to take down an American company.
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Also, the politic argument was already run when GE tried to buy Honeywell which the EU dissapproved. We (US) then nixed something in a tit for tat kind of action.
I suspect our government will turn a blind eye to this as they will probably be happy to see these sanctions go through.
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'The Heck With Mario Monti'
Mike, we must have read different articles here, because the perspective article 'To Heck with Mario Monti' says a lot about politics but nothing about trying to take down an American company. If anything, it says that the EU has done, in the name of politics, exactly what the US failed to do in the name of politics. The US dropped the ball because someone in the current administration wanted to see the ball dropped. The EU ran with the ball because they are looking to make names for themselves. There is nothing more political to this than any local politics could produce, except that Microsoft happens to be an American company (though it is important to note that the charges were against Microsoft EU, and not against Microsoft US (though they are really the same thing.) If Microsoft cannot live by these rules, then they should not sell software in Europe.
Quite frankly, I don't understand why the US dropped the ball, other than the current administration's belief that Microsoft is good for the country. I would have preferred that Microsoft had some meaningful penalties placed on the way they do business, because at the moment they can pretty much operate with impunity and we are seeing that now in the SCO battle, where it appears that Microsoft has had their hand in things indirectly, and will have their hands in things indirectly until their number 1 competitor Linux is ruled illegal or unsafe to use from a legal or political reason.
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But Microsoft is NOT an American Company!
Just because they're in Redmond doesn't mean that we souldn't take a close look at the continuing un-American activities and business practices. Anti-trust? we ought to just declare the persona-non-gratia and deport the entire company lock stock & barrel!
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