Microsoft Not Obeying Antitrust Rules Again... Maybe

from the gee,-this-sounds-familiar dept

It looks like Microsoft may be doing the same thing in Europe that it was accused of doing in the US a while back. After being dinged for antitrust violations and being told to make changes... it just kept on doing what it was doing. So, it's really no surprise to hear EU regulators complaining that Microsoft is not following through with its promise to make products more compatible with others. However, the case really isn't all that clear cut. They're judging this based on the market, rather than on what Microsoft has actually done. Of course, that might just indicate that they were wrong in their original assessment, and perhaps the problem wasn't that Microsoft had compatibility problems, but with something else entirely. If that were the case, Microsoft could make their systems more compatible every day for the rest of our lives and it wouldn't mean that the market situation would change.