Microsoft loses appeal against EU antitrust smackdown
The EU's second-highest court has rejected Microsoft's appeal on the antitrust fine levied by the European Commission four years about, although it did knock a cool €39m (£31.2m) off the total. The General Court was unmoved by Microsoft's arguments against the fine, which was imposed by the European Commission after Microsoft …
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How long as this case been going on for?
At this rate Microsoft will be bankrupt before they have to pay the fine.
Now that they're going the HP way burning cash making useless hardware it's shouldn't take very long.
Re: How long as this case been going on for?
Yeah, yeah... They did have their best ever year last year, IIRC.
You let your desire to see MS fail override reality.
And add some interest back on, hopefully
As presumably M$ haven't paid up yet due to its 'ongoing' nature?
Good thing they've invested so much in Nokia, the resolute nature of the Swedish company will keep the MS coffers full.
Oh wait.
Re: Fins do not like to be called Swedes
Also, Finns do not like to be called Fins.
Re: Fins do not like to be called Swedes
I just asked a fin whether it liked to be called a Finn, but it didn't answer. I smell a fish there...
Think how much the EU would make if they didn't allow Luxembourg to act as a tax haven for Amazon, Google, Apple et al.
Think how much employment the people of Luxembourg would lose if they weren't a tax haven. That's their USP.
Damn right. Without our tax h̶a̶v̶e̶n̶ efficient status, we'd just be another Belgium, and look how well they're doing.
Actually, no, we wouldn't be another Belgium, because half of them commute over and work here anyway! So we *and* Belgium would be worse off.
I suppose we do have the EIB, European Courts of Human Rights, and a few other institutions lying around. But kill off the tax efficiency, and the population would halve (okay, a quarter would leave...). Also, if you thought you'd seen a property bubble, OH BOY...
So please don't. It's nice and cushy here!
Re: Tax haven staffing...
Isn't one employee (possibly part time) per company the going rate for staffing levels in tax havens?
Errrrr?
Using Luxembourg 'to act as a tax haven'? Is your vivid imagination responsible for popping that thought in to your little head or did you believe something you read on the internet?
I think you will find that MS (along with most US tech companies) are based out of Dublin for tax purposes.
What to do?
Maybe they can use the Euros to help out Greece.
Just a thought! Lord knows they need it. Of course, maybe Bill can buy Greece and save it, but I doubt it.
Re: What to do?
Yeah, because with their two 100billion+ payouts already, 0.8bn is going to make a hell of a difference.
The money would be better spent put towards alternatives to MS (e.g. LibreOffice government projects) because that would not only help the Greeks but everyone else too (Hell, the British government just shaved off 65m on their IT this year alone by negotiating with MS directly).
But, actually, what will happen is it will end up being seen as a "windfall" to the EU and they'll use it for some international advertising campaign for green energy or some other such waste of space.
what about inflation?
Surely if they calculated the fine based on money back in 2005, they should add money back on for inflation.
Not to mention the fact that every time I'm late paying a fine for something it generally increases... rapidly
Call in the bailiffs
That way, they can tack on their "investigation" fee, charge 40% interest and bump it up 15% just for the hell of it.
Sell it on a couple of times too, to compound the charges.
Hey, seems like what they tried to do with my "fines". (Was an admin error by HomeChoice.) (Which in turn was SUCH an error on my part...)
Case COMP/C-3/37.792
For those of you who are interested in the whole long story search for Case COMP/C-3/37.792 and read the pdf. That is where the EU came in and the text is very good and history to day.
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