By Andy McCue, 18 March 2004 13:15
NEWS Microsoft's last-ditch talks aimed at reaching a settlement with the EU and avoiding antitrust action have failed, paving the way for a landmark legal ruling next week.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had flown in earlier this week for talks with the EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti.
But those talks collapsed today and Monti said in a statement that agreement had not been possible on commitments for Microsoft's future conduct.
"A settlement to the Microsoft case has not been possible," he said. "In the end I had to take a decision as to what was best for competition and consumers in Europe. It is essential to have a precedent which will establish clear principles for the future conduct of a company with such a strong dominant position in the market."
If the talks had been successful it would have meant Microsoft agreeing to change the way it conducts its business in Europe in order to avoid a legal finding against it that could make any future antitrust lawsuits easier to pursue.
Instead the EU is now set to sanction a massive fine with a formal legal ruling on 24 March that will say Microsoft illegally abused its dominant market position in operating systems to give it an advantage over other media player software firms.
In essence that means Microsoft could be forced to open up its proprietary top secret Windows source code to rivals as well as providing an alternative 'stripped-down' version of the operating system that doesn't come with media software bundled in.
Comments
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1. Darrall Pullen
Is it me or am I stupid?!?! no e-mails on that topic please............Microsoft "luv 'em or hate 'em" for the vast majority of end users the media player offers a functional piece of software that assists in playing media content. Personally I don't use it, I chose to download others (5 on my PC@home currently), infact most of my colleagues and friends also do NOT use M$ media player. The alternatives they use (I carried out a quick poll of 200 people I know) 90% use realplayer(basic) as their primary media player and 5% of the others use quicktime(free) and 5% DivX players (again free). Why has the EU spent this money,our money, my taxes in stating that the M$ media player is anti-competative. The alternatives being used have no market value they are FREE!!!. Ok so my sampling is small, but the indications seem to be that not many people use it anyway. Who knows next the EU will be saying that notepad is anti-competative as it is distoring the other free text editors available.
2. anonymous
So we have the bleak prospect of EU bureaucrats designing software. Windows has had AV software since its earliest versions so why pick on Windows Media - why not force Microsoft to produce a version of XP without a personal firewall (that would really be in the consumer's interest Mario!) or without a network stack or without a filesystem (if the basis for removing something is that another vendor has a similar product). So now users will have to suffer that adware product which is Real (it would be hard to find a more intrusive and irritating product)
The ruling will also inconvienience content creators (they won't know whether users have a particular media player and will have to author their content in multiple formats)
Standardisation may not be good for Real but is good for consumers and good for content creators. Windows Media and the WMA format also just happen to be superior products as well
3. Will Eastbury
Yes, that seems to be the general consensus - most of the techies that I know use winamp or musicmatch, and most non-techies I know ask me which player to use and I tell them to use Winamp.
I don't know of many people that use Windows Media Player even though it is installed by default.
4. anonymous
Am I stupid or is it a bad dream? I can't believe that any one that developes a product in the US can be told how to sell it with or without extras? For instance a pair of shoes with out shoe laces? What a crazy way to treat a co. that has invented and produced a product (even if not perfect).
(Just a thought)