By Jo Best, 24 February 2004 12:20
NEWS A date for a decision from the EC on the long-running Microsoft antitrust case has been set – but it's being kept top secret by the European Commission, amid rumours that the EC is still holding out for a deal with the über-software company.
At a European parliamentary hearing yesterday, competition commissioner Mario Monti said a deal between the two sides is still possible and no firm decision is as yet in place. "Until the moment that a decision is taken, nothing is impossible," he said.
The folks at Brussels aren't the only ones hoping the antitrust dispute will end with an agreement between the two sides. Last week, Microsoft was thought to have tried to broker a deal with the EC over the media player dispute by offering to include rival software makers' products on a CD to be distributed with new PCs, but the deal didn't go down well with the Commission.
While the bargaining goes on, Monti has said that a date for a final decision has been set. However, the date won't be revealed yet. "I have a fixed date, but it is not public," he said. Estimates for the settlement range from mid-March, when the draft resolution is reviewed by the regulators, to sometime later in May.
According to Reuters, however, the final decision might be down to Microsoft anyway.
Due to the importance placed by the Commission on maintaining the integrity of the software behemoth's intellectual property, it could be the case that the EC lays down the ends and Microsoft decides the means needed to achieve them itself.
Among the possible penalties Microsoft might find itself subject to are a fine, sharing its source code with rival manufacturers or being forced to unbundle its media player from the Windows operating system.
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1. Antony Norris
As someone who distributes software that uses Windows Media Player I would find a real pain if I couldn't guarantee that was on the destinatino machine. People don't like having to install software separately to do these things. And as Real Player is heavily salesy with constant nag screens and tricks to get people to buy it, it just isn't a viable alternative.
2. Simon
What is becoming increasingly clear is that if you are rich enough you can buy anything, even the EU commission !
If it was anyone else, all these cases would have been "you've been found guilty of <insert suitable action>, the penalty is ...". But now we see Microsoft effectively being given the opportunity to set it's own punishment !