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M$ gets another slap on the wrist...gets fined by EU.
8hammer8
Member Posts: 1,812
While this is a little more that a drop in the bucket...it is still not a whole lot in the scheme of things for M$. Microsoft has been on the wrong end of a couple things now...HD and the EU. I still see them rolling on down the road, I don't see anyone changing their current dominance.
Excerpt:
"Talk is cheap," Kroes said. "Flouting the rules is expensive."
Microsoft's actions have stifled innovation and affected millions of people around the world, Kroes said. She called the record 899 million euro fine "a reasonable response to a series of quite unreasonable actions."
"We could have gone as high as 1.5 billion euros ($2.23 billion)," she said. "The maximum amount is higher than what we did at the end of the day."
Microsoft fought hard against a March 2004 decision that led to a 497 million euro ($613 million) fine and an order that the software maker share interoperability information with rivals within 120 days. The company lost its appeal in that case in September.
Microsoft was fined $357 million in July 2006 for failing to obey that order.
The EU alleged that Microsoft withheld crucial interoperability information for desktop PC software — where it is the world's leading supplier — in an effort squeeze into a new market and damage rivals.
The company delayed compliance for three years, the EU said, only making changes in October to the patent licenses for companies that need data to create software that works with Microsoft.
"It is easier to be cruel than wise. The road to wisdom is long and difficult... so most people just turn out to be assholes" Feng (Christopher Walken)
Comments
If only the U.S. government had as big a spine as the EU. Seriously does nobody else find it distrubing that the next biggest OS competitor is a proprietary software designed for use only with Mac computers built by Apple?
Eternally mine,
Keebs
The MMO gaming blog I write for.
The U.S. government takes a %of Microsofts profits.
And no, I don't think I care that MS has no serious rivals, in fact I think it is to my own and world as a whole's advantage.
A unified code. A common language, like the whole world speaking English as a first language.
Some things need a worldwide uniform standard. It is key to the interoperability of parts. Just as IBM made the unified standard for PC design, MS does it for the OS.
I don't want another competitor here.
Where I do want, and benefit from, competition fro MS is in the peripheral programs, not the OS. I want another provider of web browsers, a Firefox, to keep IE innovating itself. A BSP player to push Media player develoment to it's limits.
The danger is when MS incorporates a firewall or anti-virus into it's system, that all the other firewall and anti-virus providers instantly go out of business; as MS provides theirs as part of Windows and no one needs two. At this point, with a market monopoly, MS no longer has any need to put any effort into it's anti-virus and Firewall tech and the end user see's a slowdown in tech improvements.
The same is of course true of monopolising the OS market. The improvements made are few and far between without any serious competition spurring the development on.
Fortunately, I don't need a new and improved OS. It is just about the least important software to me. I'm happy with my current one and I get a far bigger benefit from being able to use any and all softwares from around the world on it without compatability issues than I honestly believe I would get from having Direct X 11, or Media Player 10 by now.
In fact I get a far bigger benefit from having a compatable OS than I think I would from DX10 or Media Player 9. So I haven't upgraded to Vista either.
I don't want OS's to improve. I don't want a choice of other Os's. I want them to stay the same for as long as possible.