EU launches new probe against Microsoft

Focus this time is on whether Internet Explorer is unfairly tied to the Windows operating system, European Commission says.

The story "EU launches new probe against Microsoft" published January 14, 2008 at 7:21 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[Commander_Spock]

"Nothing Like The Real Thing"!

Show us "scotch, French wines, Coca Cola... that do not need the appropriate/convenient "containers" (bottles...) to facilitate the distribution and we will show you supersonic aircrafts that do not now need quieter engines and super sized aircrafts that do not need expanded airport facilities. Additionally, forget Windows Explorer...; have the "e-c-o-n-o-m-i-c-s" of "supersonic and the super sized aircrafts" already been worked out. :-( !

[The_Decider]

IE

The fact that MS made a BUSINESS decision to make IE part of the OS is enough proof of the greed and ineptness of Microsoft.

This foolish and shortsighted decision has cost businesses and home users more then MS ever made from it, and reduced MS to a running joke.

Good work!

[Commander_Spock]

What "Medications" Are You On!

That you cannot seem to remember what the sales figures were when the EU requested/required the United States based Microsoft Corporation to market a "modular" version of "explorer" for the EU. :-( !

[Phillep_H]

Inept?

MS makes a profit off the OS and browser. What it costs the rest of us is simply not relevant to the business decision. Computer security is not relevant, either.

Nothing is relevant to MS but the profit MS makes.

[Commander_Spock]

Good Gosh! Get A Life "Europe".

Microsoft, Intel (The "BOEING COMPANY")... today; SAP (and, GOD only knows what else the EU's Information Technology - IT industry has)... (the CONCORDE (yesterday), (AIRBUS 380's) tomorrow. :-$ :-$ :-$ !

[DarkPhoenixFF4]

You know...

Despite what you clearly think, the rest of us CAN in fact read who is posting what, so your attempt to make it look like the huge majority disagrees with the investigation comes off more like incredible sadness, of the "Don't you have a life or something?" variety.

[Commander_Spock]

"It Is The (American) Economy Stupid"!

That "The European Commission opened a new antitrust probe against Microsoft on Monday into whether it unfairly tied its Web browser to the Windows operating system and made it harder for rival software to work with Windows" is just irrelevant at a time when American home owners are pondering the next mortgage payment dates, American drivers are pondering the next price jumps at the pump, the insured are considering the effects of higher PCP co-payments for the next visits to the doctor, the higher food prices at the supermarkets... Read the subject line. :-( !

[fokwp]

Go EU

The reason none of us have choices is MS's monopoly. Want to use another word-processor - well, it might not be compatible with MS's latest proprietary file format. Another OS? sorry, not enough programs run on it. Anything that cuts MS's share back to about 30% of the world's computers would be a huge boon in choice and open up innovation all around. It would also give a great boost to standards bodies everywhere, since proponents of various architectures would have a real voice in determining interoperability, finally, rather than simply having to layer over whatever MS builds or optionally, launching a multi-M$ lawsuit when their architecture once again gets warped by MS into their latest proprietary version.

[Commander_Spock]

Where are your (as well as the EU's) senses?

Don't tell the world that the effects of dude that rose during the 1930's - 1940's are still lingering! Take a look at IBM's performance on the stock market:

"IBM, Bankers at Odds Over OS/2 Migration Path"

http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,83884,00.html

Certain things are very much likely (bound) to happen to you when your minds are "closed" to alternative paths!

[suyts]

You don't have choices??

Where have you been? What web browser are you trying to run that doesn't run on Windows? What word processor are you trying to run that doesn't run on Windows? And really, you do have a choice. If you don't like the OS with present browser, write a better one. There is nothing prohibiting this. Go for it!!! BTW, you know what would cut MS share to 30%? A better OS.

[MMC Racing]

Lets not stop there!

Get calc and notepad out of there too! Just think of all the competition being killed by those apps... :)

[Commander_Spock]

Yawn.....

... Gone fishing on aSchooner named Lotus SmartSuite (1-2-3). How about giving us a call when the "ERR Achilles Heels" Dudes at Redmond have finally been able to be ready for the international trip. See the subject line. 8-) !

[Commander_Spock]

Very Simple Solution!

With the United States dollar as low as it is - pull all of the Microsoft Corporation's operations out of Europe and have Europeans board AirBus 380's by the plane loads on their way to the United States to do their weekly shopping for all and sundry (computer products and all). :-$ ;-) :-$ !

[suyts]

Sigh,

Haven't we been down this road before? Why is it that the EU only goes after American tech companies?
And doesn't the alternative OS's bundle their web browsers now? Anyway, I don't see MS un-bundling IE from Windows, so the solution will probably another watered down version of Windows for our EU friends. They will probably want to write thank-you notes to Opera now. lol

[DarkPhoenixFF4]

The EU...

... has in fact only gone after two tech companies; Microsoft, and Intel. Take a wild guess what they have in common.

Answer: Large marketshare and the willingness to do ANYTHING to keep it, including the absolutely illegal.

[Penguinisto]

They don't.

Rummage around in Brussels' docket sometime... they go after
lots of their own as well.

As for "bundling"? That's a slippery term. Sure, Fedora Core
comes with Firefox. It also comes with Konqueror and Dillo if
you want them.

...and here's the important bits: You can choose which ones you
want (or don't want) during a Linux install. None of them are
integrated so tightly into the system that removing the browser
completely would be impossible. No Linux distro alive requires a
web browser to operate clean, easy updates (some, such as
YUM, do use HTTP, but the functionality is built in to the system,
usually by linking it to wget, a text-ased HTTP client which most
users never even see).

As for OSX? Yep - Safari comes with it. But... I can remove Safari
completely without crippling the OS.

/P

[Vegaman_Dan]

EU wants money, that's the purpose

I think it's pretty clear the EU wants money from whomever they can get it from. They sued MS, Apple, etc, for issues that in the US are called 'free market' but the EU calls 'monopoly'. The EU wants to decide for the public what companies can or cannot offer to them.

That makes me curious if the companies shouldn't actually start suing the EU?

As for bundling, yes, most OS's do it. Windows has IE, OS X has Safari, Ubuntu has Firefox, etc. What a horrible world it is too when you have freedom of choice. None of those OS's lock you out of downloading and installing a different browser if you want. I don't see how the EU should be allowed to decide what the public should be offered.

[sensi2]

Microsoft deserves to be sued

Microsoft is leveraging a monopoly, using its OS monopoly to out-compete other app vendors. It was already found illegal in the past and Microsoft may take the same path that time.

The inquiries are started after complains from the ECIS (European Committee for Interoperable Systems) which comprises Sun Microsystems, Adobe, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, [http://i.e. American companies|http://i.e. American companies] and several other vendors that compete with Microsoft in the software market. Another inquiry after Opera complain about IE bundling and non respect of W3C standards (in a try to create a defacto standard).

If i buy windows it is the OS not the crappy apps that i will not be able to remove.

@ Commander_Spock
Are you paid to post your uber fanboi while nationalist nonsense?

[Commander_Spock]

Three Things In Life - Faith, Hope and Charity!

Like self preservation is the first law of nature... then it comes naturally that charity must begin at home. That "sensi2" is forced/compelled to ask in his comments: "Commander_Spock Are you paid to post your uber fanboi while nationalist nonsense?" Well, the answers are no, and, yes. Not a "uber fanboi" of the Microsoft Corporation by an admirer of a team of people who get certain task done no matter how poorly (a much better achievement than those who lay back and expect others to do the "work" for folks like "sensi2" perhaps). On the question of "nationalist nonsense?" Well, let us suppose you are a Brazilian "Goalie" and in the heat of - let's say the Soccer World Cup you accidentally or deliberately kick the ball in your own goal and as a result your team loose the cup... do ya think you will be welcomed home. You may be reminded that "The Bill Clinton Administration's Campaign Slogan" said it best: "It Is About The Economy ......" Hey "sensi2"! When are your next "skiing", "fishing" and "golfing" trips?

[Commander_Spock]

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the...

United Kingdom should again knight Bill Gates :-) for his Company's (as ERR Achilles Heels as they are) as well as his personal contribution towards the advancement of computing (desktop...) technologies as we know it today. With all due respect for the other non-English languages... notice just how closely the REXX Language on which the OS/2 Operating System is based and Queen's English. Perhaps, this is just what gives the United States based Microsoft Corporation (Code-Base OS/2) its (90% plus market share) competitive edge. Ya don't necessarily need a browser to use the IBM's OS/2 Operating System on the web to get down to business.

"Operating System/2 (OS/2) was originally developed as a joint project between IBM and Microsoft."

"In November, 1994, OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released. It was the first PC operating system to have built-in Internet support. At the time, OS/2 critics said that Internet support was just "more geek crap," but today every major operating system ships with built-in Internet support. The release of OS/2 Warp Connect followed, and included full network support out of the box for all the major protocols, including IPX, TCP/IP, and NetBIOS. At this point, the focus for OS/2 became the "networked computer." When Windows 95 was released in August, 1995, resellers reported record sales on OS/2, as many people saw how Microsoft's hack didn't quite cut it for real-world, mission-critical usage....."

http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2Warp.html

"IBM OS/2 Warp 4"

http://toastytech.com/guis/os24.html

"Mozilla Plugin Support on OS/2 Warp"

" * Adobe Acrobat Reader
* Auto Wget
* Digital Sound & Music Interface
* DjVu
* Java Runtime Environment
* Macromedia Flash
* META viewer
* Netscape Plugin Pak
* PM Downloader
* QuickFlick
* Unzip Plugin
* WarpVision "

http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/OS2.html

"The IBM OS/2 WebExplorer"

http://seds.org/~spider/os2/webex.html

Surly, from the above there is at least one (better) alternative to Microsoft Windozzzeeeeee.... ;-) !

[Commander_Spock]

Alternative Market Forces/Share to that of the EU....

Now, let us see if the United Kingdom leaves/ignores the EU What we have as the Population of The British Commonwealth of Nations: 1.8 billion (30% of world population) ;-) M :-$ M :-)

[suyts]

HEY!!!!!! I just realized,

I installed fedora 10.1 a while back. IE wasn't included in the web browser options!?!?! That's not fair!!!!! Somebody should sue!!!! Wah....wah... Fact is, I haven't seen one *nix that had IE!!!!! Treachery, I say!!!!! Macs don't come with IE either. More treachery!!!!! These people are trying to leverage their web browsers with the niche OS monopoly that they have!!!!! Somebody should sue!!!!