back to article Europe tickles Microsoft with €561m fine for browser choice gaffe

Microsoft has been fined €561m ($731m, £484m) by the European Commission for breaking an agreement to offer Windows users alternative web browsers to Internet Explorer. A fresh investigation was launched against Microsoft by Brussels' competition officials in mid-2012 following complaints that the company was still using its …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. Dan Paul
    Devil

    Grow a Pair Microsoft! Preferably made of Tungsten Carbide

    Let the downvotes begin....

    Microsoft, Please do not pay this ransom money and instead take that cash and fix Windows 8 so all the complaints can be silenced now and forever. I bet if you gave even half of that money to your programmers, they could come up with something that would make everyone else run and hide in fear, even Eadon.

    Fuck the Eurocrasy and the Eurocrites, let them use Linux and what ever "browser" they want to use. The grey market will still sell as much product in Europe as you do now.

    You should have never agreed to any of this anti-american crap to begin with. That was a sign of weakness you should have never exhibited.

    If a non MS browser is so damn good then the free market says that customers will find it and use it no matter where it is or how hard it is to download. The ones that now use anything other than MS IE certainly would have and the ones who can't figure it out would not have made good customers anyway.

    Besides...get this now...no one actually sells the browser... the money that is made is strictly parasitic - advertising and clicks. So who was really injured? Still you can't get a fair trial anywhere these days, especially an American company in Eurpoe. (or vice versa)

    Whining Eurocrats only want to jam anti-american, anti-competitive penalties down MS throat to promote and subsidize a product that STILL almost no one uses, (Opera).

    Talk about living in the past.. maybe this was an issue in the 90's but not now.

    That's what you expect from the French model of society where 75% of the population lives off the efforts of the remaining 25% that still have a work ethic. Lets cut the hamstrings of MS so Opera can have a fair shake instead of letting the market decide.

    1. Don Jefe
      Alert

      Re: Grow a Pair Microsoft! Preferably made of Tungsten Carbide

      USA USA USA

      Jesus dude. I'm reasonably proud to be from the U.S. (most of the time) but shit like you are spewing makes everyone from the States look like assholes.

      Besides you are doing it wrong: a proper Patriot would have MS pay the fine in gold bricks shaped like U.S. flags and emblazoned with the MS logo and airdropped in with little red white & blue parachutes.

      1. Dan Paul
        Devil

        Re: Grow a Pair Microsoft! Preferably made of Tungsten Carbide

        Don,

        I'm only telling it like it is. Are you afraid of the arseholes that take every opportunity to criticize the US and those who live in it? Why should MS pay ANY fine in any denomination? They should just do something productive with the money and let the EU pound salt.

        If the EU is so "Fair" then why have Apple (or other companies, BBC anyone) not been "judged" for the same (or significantly worse) conduct? None of the EU contingent will ever discuss this subject rationally so there's no harm in taking it to the extremes. Extremes even seems to be an El Reg requirement.

        Let's face facts, this whole case still revolves around the European Union's misguided (and outdated) "opinion" that MS was forcing IE down peoples throats when in fact, anyone who could download the browser of their choice could still install it, then and now.

        This was a purely anti-American punitive judgemment that had little to no basis in reality but was entirely politically motivated. These things happen in elsewhere in the EU, China, and US but apparently most frequently in the land of entitlements. And the US Government is not without it's own slant on punitive judgements ala Apple V Samsung.

        MS makes Operating Systems as it's main business and Office Productivity software as its secondary business. It only provides a browser for the convenience of it's users and that is not the main thrust of the company.

        MS did in fact "integrate" the browser into it's operating system but you could always download and install Opera or almost any other browser and use it. Why is including a browser considered "anti-competitive" any more than providing some other software to be used for any other specific purpose?

        The unfair tactics of the EU courts allowed the "advertising subsidy" of a browser selection page and a huge fine and literally no legal recourse of any value to MS.

        What did selection page really do for any of the alternate browsers that looking them up in Google (or some other EU approved search engine) and downloading them would not have done? They still used IE to download the browser of their choice.

        What if MS had not included a browser to begin with? That would be rather inconvenient don't you think?

        This browser argument was stupid then and getting even worse now. Everyone always had a choice of browsers then and now. You just had to be a competent computer user to do so.

    2. Nuke
      Facepalm

      @ Dan Paul - Re: Grow a Pair Microsoft! Preferably made of Tungsten Carbide

      Wrote :- "If a non MS browser is so damn good then the free market says that customers will find it and use it "

      That is the "Grantham Grocer Fallacy"

      The free market does not work that way in the realm of hi-tech. Being too complex for Joe Sixpack to understand, he just takes the word of advertising and salesmen instead.

      The "Best" only has a chance of emerging in a free market in the case of simple and frequently purchased things, groceries for example, which most people can understand.

      See :- www.nuke.demon.co.uk/grantham_grocer/index.html

      1. Dan Paul
        Devil

        Re: @ Dan Paul - Grow a Pair Microsoft! Preferably made of Tungsten Carbide

        IMHO that's too bad, let Darwin sort out the smart and competent from the stupid and incompetent.

        If we stop trying to support those who aren't intelligent, they will eventually get dropped from the gene pool and the human race will be better for it. That's not a "fallacy".

        Otherwise, we are breeding a culture of stupid cows that have come to expect they will always be taken care of even if they have nothing to contribute to society!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Besides you are doing it wrong: a proper Patriot would have MS pay the fine in gold bricks shaped like U.S. flags and emblazoned with the MS logo and airdropped in with little red white & blue parachutes.

    Sure they would. Judging by the daily increase in the national debt, most of that gold is foreign owned anyway..

  3. Smoking Gun

    MS broke an agreement plain and simple. Get the cheque book out.

    The rest is Microsoft bashing.

    All the major players are doing it. If you have a tech you want your customer to be using it - the issue being you cannot lock them in to using it.

    At what point do Microsoft stop you from installing another browser? Fine, IE is bundled, so what?

    I hope the EU clamp down on Apple enforcing you to have an iTunes account to do anything.

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like