Microsoft 'didn't notice' it had removed Browser Choice for 17 months Brussels' competition commissioner has opened a fresh investigation into Microsoft's practice of using its Windows operating system to push people into using its Internet Explorer browser, following allegations of non-compliance with an EC settlement deal the software giant agreed to in late 2009. Microsoft, under the legally- …
Firstly 63% is the percentage of web accesses, not users. Android users keep telling us how they are selling more mobile devices than Apple.
Secondly its not a monopoly position anyway.
Thirdly (and what got MS into trouble) its not illegal to hold a monopoly, what IS illegal is to use that monopoly to unfairly gain advantage in another market. Forcing users to take IE (to the point of nailing it into the OS and banning OEMs from installing third party browsers) in order to gain market share was what caused the trouble.
Hey now - us Irish are ahead of them Spanish José-Come-Lately types in the queue for bailout cash! Plus Apple and Intel both run large operations here so we should get first dibs on any cash made by extortin...er....fining them.
Beer icon, because hopefully we'll be able to afford one again soon.
> but not Greece.
Greece's situation with tax has not changed for generations.
It is the scapegoat blamed for their current financial problems.
The truth is, their government, like many other governments around the world (including the UK under Labour) vastly overspent on pointless and fanciful public projects that they neither needed nor wanted. In many cases, those projects weren't even completed.
Knob.
Yes. Because of Labour's huge increase in public spending my wife lost her job when they cut hundred's of thousands of civil service post. By the way when where these 'good times' that 'Dave' refers to when the last government should have been saving for the 'bad times'? Anybody remember them?
Knob
@Natalie Gritpants
Yeah, that's a great idea, I think Ireland should increase its corporation tax rate to the lowest corporation tax rate of say... France.
Then Ireland would have to increase its corporate tax rate by....... -1%
Glad to see you haven't lets facts get in the way of your opinion.
Oooohhh I got it wrong....
The French Agency for International Investment – the French “IDA” has cited the recent study by the World Bank and Price Waterhouse Coopers which has calculated the French effective corporate tax rate to be 8.2%, which is very considerably lower than its nominal rate of 33.3%.
So for Ireland to have the same effective rate of France Ireland would have to increase its corporate tax rate by....... -4.3%
I just had this download by update on a laptop I was setting up yesterday. But thinking about it, there was no browser ballot screen when I set my Mum's new PC a month ago. I believe the operative term here is "Ooops!".
I can't imagine MS were stupid enough to do this deliberately. But it still shows a certain contempt for the decision. To think they just had a couple of million shaved off their fine, on appeal. Now the EU can claw all that back again, and maybe some more...
Perhaps the punishment should be to make them bake it into the OS this time, rather than delivering it as an update?
Unfortunately corporate fines don't impact those who took the illegal decisions (or were incompetent), and they don't alter behaviours. So year in, year out, somebody is being fined eye watering sums for cartel practices - but that doesn't stop people doing it.
The EU competition authorities have levied fines amounting to one to two billion euro a year, and have been doing this for a decade or more. And halfway through 2012 we're already at €0.4bn of fines, not including anything MS have to pony up. And there's no shortage of ongoing work for these boys:
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/cases/cases.html
Who then pays the fine? Is it the investors - often your or my pension fund? Or, given that all of an established company's revenue comes from customers, is it the customers paying the fine? Either way, the guilty management feel that the prospective penalties on them multiplied by the chance of discovery and successful conviction are less than the benefits of crooked business. And the number of personal punishments for competition offences is small enough to qualify as non-existent.
So if MS are fined again, who's actually losing out, other than you or me in some capacity or other?
Neelie Kroes in March 2004 said: "Microsoft was the first company in fifty years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision."
...and they've now gone and done it again. I don't think there'll be any leniency from the EC.
Turned PC on and this stupid window appeared telling me it had 'without my permission' deleted my browser shortcut and I had to pick which browser I wanted to use.
Surely this is illegal alteration of my PC without my permission?
At least I now know where to target the Destiny Ascension's main gun........
(They broke Omega's only rule......)
"this is illegal alteration of my PC without my permission"
Sorry mate, have you read the MS EULA? They say they can remove functionality without recompense, probably aimed at DRM stuff (e.g. revoking a compromised video card's permission for HD video) but I'm sure it covers this (and any other breaking of functions) as well.
I mean, just who do you think you are? It is not like you own the software now, do you?
About the same time they gain near-enough 100% of the desktop computer OS share?
Let's face it, you can get along quite nicely without ever touching an Apple-branded machine. Try that with Windows and see how far you get.
No, neckbeards who like to pretend that LaTeX is the same as Office or in any way appropriate for normal people, you don't count. And yes, I do use various Linuxes.
Why?
You are free to buy any handset you wish, there are literally hundreds from which to choose, with various OSs and capabilities. There is no monopoly in the handset market (APPL or anyone else), and AFAIK APPL is not under any anti-trust investigations.
So, it is completely and utterly unsurprising that no action has been taken against APPL for their non-monopoly behaviour. This would first require APPL to break the law, or become a monopoly and then breach the anti-trust provisions prevailing upon monpolies, neither of which have happened, or are liekly to happen any time soon.
So, perhaps you should start at kindergarten and work up from there again, eh?
.....apart from the Eurocrats?
<Slow handclap>
The EU. Pissing your money on the wall in a pointless bureaucracy-fest since 1993[1]. They'll probably end up fining MS again, we'll pay for it indirectly in higher prices somewhere and they'll spend the cash on hiring a load of quants to analyse cattle hoof health surveys, a new institute to foster better relations with Ghanaian squirrel-farmers, more plushly appointed carriages to cosset their backsides on the Brussels-Strasbourg run, or similar......
[1] It was called something else before that. Pick your favourite from "Common Market", "European Community", "European Economic Community", Fourth Reich.......etc ad nauseum.
Oi, wanker.
It was already known as the European Commission in 1993. The Commission's budget is tiny in comparison to GDP, national budgets or the multitude of subventions that member states push through to support their pet industries. But maybe you'd prefer price-fixing and higher mobile phone charges?
That's not to say that the Commission hasn't wasted money on pet projects but it does have a far better track record than most national governments.
Good. That screen is a pita. Of the few computers I support for friends/family, those who saw the screen were confused by it, those who would be interested had already jumped and so did not see it.
I rarely defend ms, but they should be shipping a browser with their OS and its reasonable it should be their own browser. I don't recall Windows ever attempting to make it difficult for me to install an alternative.
Don't fine MS any more, they will only tie it up in appeals etc for years.
Instead force them to allowother browsers on Wnidows 8 with full API etc access and a BCS screen as part of the install process.
Then state that compliance is mandentrary for them to be able to release the software and can only be turned off if they win an appeal.
That way I could have firefox or chrome or whatever I want without it being hamstringed.....
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