Microsoft Suffers EU Antitrust Defeat
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 17th Sep 2007 15:17 UTC, submitted by Rahul
Legal Microsoft suffered a stunning defeat on Monday when a European Union court backed a European Commission ruling that the US software giant illegally abused its market power to crush competitors. The European Union's second-highest court dismissed the company's appeal on all substantive points of the 2004 antitrustruling. The court said Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, was unjustified in tying new applications to its Windows operating system in a way that harmed consumer choice. The verdict, which may be appealed only on points of law and not of fact, could force Microsoft to change its business practices.
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jabbotts
Member since:
2007-09-06

Would it be so "do it all yourself" hard to open your browser, go to Windows Update and download Media Player as an available add-on instead of having it prebundled? That's all they really have to do on the WMP thing and everyone suddenly gets the choice to use it or not. (repository managed OS really are that easy)

Server products should end at the network card. MS does all they can to impose the server os down the network medium to the client? If my server is running Windows, why should it care that my workstation runs something else. If industry standards are used or MS protocols properly documented and not changed to force an ongoing game of catchup then what's the problem?

In the DOS days, I could dial a BBs by modem and connection without this sort of BS. Your BBs runs on a Mac, a *nix or a Windows box; don't care.. your BBs and my workstation both end at the modem leaving the transmission medium neutral. I use Terminate for dialing but you use Wildcat BBs; don't care, they both talk to each other just fine. So why should it be any different now with Windows if you use Exchange Server and I don't use Outlook?

Keeping the MS secret sauce protocols hidden and changing them purely to keep competition a step behind does not benefit the customers. It's just another dirty trick to keep from having to address the quality of there products in an actually competitive market.

Reply Parent Score: 3

gonzo Member since:
2005-11-10

Would it be so "do it all yourself" hard to open your browser, go to Windows Update and download Media Player as an available add-on instead of having it prebundled?

Browser? What browser? Browser should not be there either.

And then you can say the same for, let's see.. Notepad, TrueType Fonts, DirectX, icons, NTFS --- well, everything.

Reply Parent Score: 1

jabbotts Member since:
2007-09-06

Yet with other alternatives, I can uninstall the equivalents of notepad, fonts, directX, icons.

NTFS is a partition file format so that's really outside the scope of "bundled applications" since it is an essencial part of the NT OS unlike notepad, IE and WMP which are user space programs not truly essential to booting the NT kernel and reading a drive.

But there again, I can choose from over 30 different partition file formats including fat16, fat32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, RieserFS. Still, with winNT, I can use fat32 or NTFS partitions but in reality the functions provided by NTFS are still essential to a properly functioning and secure winNT. I include this last bit as more of a comparison demonstrating the limitation of Windows and flexability of it's alternatives.

Reply Parent Score: 1

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