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March 22, 2007 5:40 AM PDT
Microsoft continues abuse, EU official says
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European Union's top antitrust official tells European Parliament that Microsoft keeps gaining market share through "abusive behavior."
The story "Microsoft continues abuse, EU official says" published March 22, 2007 at 5:40 AM is no longer available on CNET News.
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This is just another example of another government trying to take down a US company. I guess if you can't compete, legislate.
When you run a business you have to abide by certain rules and regulations, often these are called LAWS.
When you break these LAWS, action is taken against your business, this is often called PUNISHMENT.
Sometimes you can come to an agreement that lessens your PUNISHMENT in return for agreeing to abide by certain terms and conditions. This is called a SETTLEMENT.
When you sign the SETTLEMENT you agree to pay the consequences of breaking said SETTLEMENT.
Microsoft broke business laws. They were then punished for doing so, but as a reasonable entity, the EU government allowed a reasonable settlement. Microsoft then broke said settlement and where then appropriately punished for doing so, as agreed in the original settlement.
This is different to the US where, having broken all their anti trust settlements, the only action taken against Microsoft was a whole bunch of hand wringing and muttering about the DOJ not being happy.
What laws did they break.
Software theft, abuse of a monopoly amongst others. They stole the software of competitors to either 1/make their software better or 2/make the competitors software run slower and less efficiently under the dominant business operating system.
They also produced software for this operating system, and in order to drive competitors out of business, gave it away free - thus removing the possibility of any income for those companies that write that type of software.
They did this with office applications such as word processing, spreadsheets and small database applications. They did this with development software, they did this with the browser/email market, they did this with media software, and now they're doing it again with anti-malware software.
Using their dominance of the operating system market it is easy for Microsoft to decide to enter any software market they choose, and using operating system code that only they know about, produce a more efficient and faster product, whilst at the same time, implementing hurdles in the OS that cripples any competitors product.
It has been proven that they have done these things - which is why they were fined and why they were forced to open up their operating system to their competitors.
They had already shown they were not to be trusted.
A trusted business would be allowed to keep their intellectual property secret. A business that doesn't abuse it's position as a monopoly would not be forced to allow competitors to buy sections of the operating system code that apply to that competitors product.
Microsoft then attempted to break the settlement by 1/not giving the operating system code they were supposed to, or by sending incomplete or incorrect documentation in its place. 2/continuing to use their position as a monopoly to disadvantage their competitors.
They deserve every punishment they've received, and deserve to be punished again for continuing to break the law.
This is about Microsoft doing their
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish
The MicroSoft gains have mostly come at the expense of legacy systems and UNIX systems.
Linux is eroding market share of legacy, UNIX and MicroSoft systems - but mostly the latter two.
The EU uses IBM and Google too, and you don't see them getting fined half a billion dollars do you?
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://reddevnews.com/news/devnews/article.aspx?editorialsid=192" target="_newWindow">http://reddevnews.com/news/devnews/article.aspx?editorialsid=192</a>
I suspect nothing short of open sourcing Windows will make the happy. For all the Microsoft haters, they maybe doing it to Microsoft now, but that doesn't mean they couldn't do it Intel, Apple, or any other dominate U.S companies. It clear that there are those that will seek to compete by having regulators handicap the completion for them. Real Networks for example, they and a few others convinced the EU to force Microsoft to remove WMP from Windows.
"As a consequence of your abusive behavior, you are getting positive results for the company--that's not acceptable in my opinion," she said, addressing Microsoft.
What she is saying is that because people prefer your product we are going to fine you. I wonder if MS was based in the EU would they be getting fined. I doubt it. Just more anti-american crap from a neo-marxist organization. Hate the capitalists. Everything should be free. How long does the rest of the world have to suffer this FAILED idealogy?
Paul
The reason that European commission is able to impose real sanctions on Microsoft and make it pay those sanctions is because they have real
democracy in Europe. It is because the European governments 1st work for the benefit of their citizens and then Big corporations/media, whereas in US the government 1st works for the benefit of Big (wall street backed) corporation and at the distant 2nd place for it's citizens.
To see this point, consider the fact the people in USA still don't even have Universal Health care!
No European government would last 6 months in power if it was omitting to provide its citizen
with such a basic service. You have to go to real pathetically poor countries, such as Angola, Gahana, Bangladesh, etc. to find other examples of countries that do not provide universal health care to their citizens. To put things into perspective of how un-democratic this is: more Americans die (every few days) from lack of health care than died in Sep/11/2001!
Now I can give you another 1000 examples of how un-democratic the US is compared to European
countries, but then this post would get too long.
The question is then, how is it possible that the US is so un-democratic?
How do the powers to be in US get away with this lack of democracy? How come there are not demonstrations in US streets to replace their un-democratic government with a democratic one, as there are all the time in European countries?
The answer is that the US media is controlled by a handful of people, who have "brain washed"
the people into gullibility and not knowing what is the truth anymore. And the US media is not just WallStreet Journal, CNN, CBS, etc.but it is also Hollywood, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc., it is this oligopoly that wants to control all "eye balls" worldwide.
Of course as the ultimate indication of how fundamentally rich Europe is compared to US,
because of the fact that it is a real democracy working for its people 1st, all you have to look
at is the collapsing Dollar against Euro, because once someone spends some time in US
and in Europe, they realize that US is totally screwed up because it is anything but a democracy
and as the ultimate proof of this fact all you have to do is look at the criminal war that US has
waged on Iraq which has resulted in a real Genocide of our ages.
So EU indeed needs to take the actions that it has taken against Microsoft and in fact take further actions to protect it's economy/culture from being controlled by US media oligopoly. Less EU wants to end up being as un-democratic and as fundamentally poor as US citizens are.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-0012.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-0012.html</a>
re: "For many years, anyone seeking to patent the use of a computer for functions that were previously performed manually had double trouble if the invention related to a ?way of doing business.? First, the Patent and Trademark Office decided that mathematical algorithms were not a statutory category of subject matter that could be protected by patent. Second, ?business methods? were held to be unpatentable. These two objections have been eroded over the years.
Recently, software inventions involving algorithms have been eligible for United States patents as long as tangible results are produced. Also, in the mid-1980s, Merrill Lynch won a court ruling that it was entitled to have a patent on its Cash Management System, which involved various types of processing of financial data by computer.
In 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the State Street case destroyed the last remnant of the ?method of doing business? objection to obtaining a patent. It ruled that no legal basis exists for such an exception to patentability and that if an invention otherwise meets the standards for patentability, there is no legitimate basis for denying the issuance of a patent. This ruling was made for a software invention that used computerized processing to establish a system for pooling of assets of mutual funds.
The State Street decision, combined with the rapid growth of e-commerce, has led to a large number of patent filings on software inventions related to a method of doing business. Amazon.com, for example, patented its ?1-click? system, which enhances the speed and efficiency with which a customer can place an order.
As a result of the patenting changes, people creating new, computerized business systems must consider patent protection. The fact that a computer is performing accounting or financial processing which previously had been performed manually does not preclude patentability if the standards of patentability (i.e., usefulness, novelty, and unobviousness) are met. Simply computerizing an operation may not result in a patentable invention, however. One must look at the differences between the com-puterized system and the prior manual approach, as well as the value added through the use of the computerized system. One also should consider the types of patent protection available, e.g., methods, apparatus, and products..."; the above being the freedoms that the Microsoft Corporation; or for that matter, any company operating under United States Laws and well established Constitutional norms...
Good write,
Paul