Microsoft Faces $618m Fine In Eu Case

[Busyman]

Originally posted by clocker@12 May 2004 - 10:36
Leftism,
What the hell are you on about?
Not once in my posts have I said the first thing about this being some sort of uniquely European phenomonon.
The fact that this fine was imposed by the EU is completely irrelevant.

Please don't muddy the waters here by trying to invent some pro-US aspect in my argument...it simply doesn't exist.

I thought the initial basis of the American lawsuit was crap.

Netscape had 90% of the browser market. Microsoft takes it away. Netscape cries foul.

[Busyman]

Originally posted by lynx@12 May 2004 - 05:52
To use the networking example again, this goes back to the time when most buyers were corporate users.

The networking product was bundled in with the OS. What corporate buyer was going to go to the board and tell them "We've got networking with this product but I suggest we ignore what we've had to spend on that and go out an buy a new one. And if you could suggest where I look for a new job that would be useful".

Networking didn't need to be part of the OS. Integrating it so closely has been the cause of most of the worst security breaches. It is not like the Ferrari engine, more like bundling a garage in with the car. It doesn't match your home, it is even out of character with the locality and it breaks all the planning laws, but nobody is doing anything about that and, what the heck, it is "free".

I think you've probably noticed this, many pc's come with pre-installed software. It often isn't all Microsoft software, which means it had to be installed separately. The big pc vendors don't mind, they do it once (or twice to make sure they've got it right) then they clone the hard drive. But there's a media player included with the windows price, do you really think they are going to buy another player, at their own cost, just to give it away? Once again, the corporate buyer who suggested that would very quickly be looking for a new job. And most of the public don't realise what a crappy product WMP is (and IE for that matter) so they go along with it.

That's like buying the Ferrari with the garage. You CAN open the garage doors and drive outside, but there are no instructions on how to do it, and anyway the garage is now tightly bolted on, and it keeps some the rain off your Ferrari. Most people don't realise they should be able to buy the Ferrari on it's own, but they are uninformed, and they are still being told that their Ferrari can do 0-60 in 5 seconds. Now fitted with Microsoft Stopwatch for improved performance, 0-60 in under 1 second!!!

Built in Firewall? Don't make me laugh, but you can bet that's the next big push. At the moment it's a complete POS, but Microsoft will improve it slightly so that it nearly works, then push it as the best thing since sliced bread. What do you suppose will happen to the other Firewall suppliers.

And the $90 OS?
Most pc's have got an OS thrown in. The people who bought the pc's paid $90 for it, although they don't realise it because it was an inclusive price.

Now they want a new pc because their old one is out of date. So they get one, and pay $90 for a new OS. And this one has 2 "free" extra features. But of course they already had a perfectly good OS, so they've just paid $90 for the 2 extra features. When you look at it in those terms, all of a sudden it isn't such a good deal.

Nobody so far has said Windows isn't a good product. But IE is mediocre and WMP is a POS. I don't use WMP at all, and I only use IE when I have to because some Microsoft brainwashed idiot has designed their website to be compatible with IE and nothing else. So I have no choice but to have IE installed, and I understand the problems trying to remove WMP are worse than leaving it sitting unused, even though it probably leaves gaping security holes and degrades the performance of my pc just by being installed.

Nobody want's to stop Microsoft selling any of these products, they just want them to do it FAIRLY.

lynx once again your argument is flawed.

If the consumer wants what is normally an add-on for free and that "add-on" is inferior that is the consumers fault.

Microsoft has a firewall. I believe it sucks so I buy Zone Alarm.

Consumer stays with the free MS firewall. How is that MS's fault?

You are faulting Microsoft because you know there are better add-ons out there that the masses don't know about.

It also the "fault" of the consumer for buying a new OS when it's not needed.

If a consumer paid money to upgrade to Windows ME to gain 2 features. again that's their "fault".

Before America's case against Microsoft, I didn't hear this public outcry for Microsoft to bundled competitors products. The outcry was from competitors.

Stop blaming MS for shit you the consumer should be doing.

This reminds me somewhat of McDonalds.

Someone stuffs their face there for years and years then complains of being fat and unhealthy.

Some consumers are not always right. In this Microsoft case, the consumer was even the one complaining.

[Snee]

Originally posted by Busyman@12 May 2004 - 16:25
Before America's case against Microsoft, I didn't hear this public outcry for Microsoft to bundled competitors products. The outcry was from competitors.

I've heard people bitch about their monopoly for years.

Might not have been noticed in the US until the Americans themselves did something about it.

The fact that the EU followed suit...well they may have thought it a lost cause until MS got spanked on their home court.

Can't verify anything about the rest of the EU though, only what's happened in my own country. Here people are allergic to monopolies apparently, and the laws are pretty strict against it.

Except of course when it comes to alcohol, the government owns that monopoly, it's not allowed for any other company to sell liqour apart from the government run one, which btw jacks up the prices something fierce.

An article from 2002 about a trial on the Microsoft OS monopoly: in swedish though, another article from 1999 that mentions the monopoly, also in Swedish

Edit: the general idea one gets, and this is just from browsing the web, is that there's been widespread talk of a monopoly, possibly considered illegal, ever since netscape and explorer first saw the light of day.

[Rat Faced]

Originally posted by clocker@12 May 2004 - 14:08
yet this punitive fine seems to single out a single manufacturer for violating some nebulous consumer protection law not applied to other companies.

This Law is applied to other companies, frequently.

It usually involves collusion between companies in the UK.. eg Price of New Cars being "fixed" by supposedly competing manufacturers, and every now and then a Media Company hits the headlines.

The difference here is that it was taken up by the EU as a whole, rather than the individual Monopolies Commisions (or equivalent) of the Member States.

If there had been 15 seperate investigations then not only would that have been duplication of effort, but the cumulative fines would probably have been more than the single Fine imposed.

It would have been the same as if every individual State of the USA prosecuted and investigated them seperatly and the courts then proceded to Fine them 50 times instead of once....not very efficient, and the costs would have been a lot higher.

[J'Pol]

Hasn't the EU case been running for a few years.

[Busyman]

Originally posted by J'Pol@12 May 2004 - 19:56
Hasn't the EU case been running for a few years.

Uh huh.

[J'Pol]

Forgive my ignorance, but how is the EU jumping on a bandwagon started in the US.

[lynx]

Originally posted by clocker@12 May 2004 - 14:08
Lynx,
To use your networking example...
Why was the MS OS purchased in the first place if a critical component (the networking software) was known to be flawed or not suitable for the corporation's needs?
Sounds like a failure by the IT department rather than MS to me.
ane.

Sorry clocker, you've obviously not come across the Board vs IT department scenario. The IT department knows exactly what it needs, the Board looks at this, someone on the board thinks (s)he knows better and persuades the board to employ a "consultant" to reduce IT costs. The consultant either doesn't know his arse from his elbow or decides that he can make more money by going against the IT dept, so his recommendation is to go with the crap they've already paid for, usually with some useless add-ons supplied by his own company or another company that he gets a kick back from.

No disrespect to you clocker, but I've been doing this for nearly 30 years, and I've seen that scenario too many times. I've also seen the shit that Microsoft have come out with year after year, and the good companies that they have ploughed under. To be blunt the general level of their products would get a C-. You (like most of the general public) may think what they produce is good, but that is probably because you haven't seen what good software is really like.

Having said that, I believe that the Windows product can be the right way forward, and Microsoft products can be good, but if they stifle the competition they have nothing to work against so their own targets become lower and the whole thing could end up in the shitter.

At the moment, Microsoft have nothing to worry about from Linux. Installation of just about anything is a nightmare, documentation is abyssmal (there is plenty of it, but it is written in the form of a PhD dissertation), and compatibility between variations is dubious. But it is improving, and this is the one area where the MS muscle even in it's SCO guise (who knew that was still part of MS) won't have a significant effect.

I've said enough on this subject.
If you can't see that what's wrong is wrong, so be it.

[clocker]

Lynx,
Your "networking example", while obviously near and dear to your heart, has failed to demonstrate how Microsoft has colluded to deny your company the ability to achieve their desired goals.
Office politics, misplaced thrift and general ignorance would seem to be the big problems here.
How does slapping MS on the wrist change this scenario at all?

If the overriding concern is that MS has somehow stifled competition by "bundling" extras (WMP, Winamp,etc) with Windows, then I suppose that we can expect a major increase in the sales/installation of RealPlayer should these items be deleted?
Get real ( bad pun).
As long as Windows doesn't crash when you try install an aftermarket component, then I don't see where the monopoly problem is coming from.

[J'Pol]

Originally posted by Mr JP Fugley@11 May 2004 - 16:24
The EU's Competition Commissioner had accused the company of illegally exploiting its stranglehold on the personal computer market.

On the one hand, the commissioner said, Microsoft was trying to corner the market for servers, the larger back-end computers which store information for other users to access.

On the other, he charged, it was trying to stifle competition for multimedia players such as Real Networks' Realplayer and Apple's Quicktime.

Old Source

i think the whole WMP may only be part of it.

Isn't it more this part that chaps like lynx are referring to. The part which relates to the fundamental infrastructure of systems and networks. As opposed to the part used to play your mp3's.

Isn't it the case that newspapers talking about servers and networking software would be of little interest, or beyond the understanding of their readers. So they concentrate on the aspect they will understand, media players - yes most people use them.

Again the point is not the relative merits of the software. It is the practices used to prevent others from developing and producing their own products. The fairness (to the consumer)element relates to the fact that if there are no options then MS (or anyone else) can sell whatever they want, people will be forced to buy it. Decent capitalism requires competition.

Monopolies also stifle advances in technology. Why have a huge R&D Department spending millions or billions of dollars, when folk have to get the stuff from you anyway. Let it advance, yes but what's the rush. If someone else comes along with something better, just put him out of business.

This ruling is not a pop at MS, it is the EU upholding one of it's fundamental principles.