OSNews is Exploring the Future of Computing

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 27th Feb 2008 18:33 UTC, submitted by JJ

"Microsoft was fined a record 899 million euros (USD 1.35 billion) by the European Commission on Wednesday for using high prices to discourage software competition in the latest sanction in their long-running battle. The executive arm of the European Union said the U.S. software group defied a 2004 order from Brussels to provide the information on reasonable terms. Microsoft has now been fined a total of 1.68 billion euros by the EU for abusing its 95 percent dominance of PC operating systems through Windows."

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RE[3]: Thats Crazy

by tomcat on Thu 28th Feb 2008 00:57 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Thats Crazy"

Member since:
2006-01-06

do you actually know what the EU does?

Yeah, they generate voluminous amounts of paper, hot air, and fines.

Yes, the fine is big, BUT microsoft would not have those kind of sums in the bank had it not denied the competition

That is debatable. We don't know the impact of the lack of interop documentation on the marketplace. Samba is a perfect example of an excellent product that has succeeded in spite of no docs.

The reason no-one wanted the non media player version was it was the same price as the version WITH (in the uk at least)

Perhaps, in some peoples' fantasy world, everyone should pay for a media player. Or a web browser. Or notepad. Or paint. Or solitaire. Or other least-common-denominator software that just about everyone uses. But that isn't reality. Practically nobody buys commercial versions of basic apps when there are perfectly good free choices on the market (WinAmp, FireFox, Flash, etc). So, really, those apps don't (and shouldn't) affect the price of Windows.

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