6 ms·
Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice
- youngtaff 14y agoIt's completely crazy. We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time, what's next fining Apple for not promoting Mozilla or Chrome on iOS?
- robin_reala 14y agoThis fine is the outcome of repeated failures on MS’s part to properly implement court-ordered reparations, rather than a direct fine required by the original judgement.
- youngtaff 14y agoYes but the original judgement was wrong too - politically motivated you might say
- sgift 14y agoYeah, it had the political motivation to uphold the European laws regarding abuses of a monopoly. Evil ...
- youngtaff 14y agoNo politically motivated as in a small European browser maker that't always had the smallest market share on Windows decided to make a complaint over something completely ridiculous i.e. MS bundling a browser with the OS
- powertower 14y agoGot to protect those people who can't figure out how to open IE and download the browser that they really want.
- rtpg 14y agoAs has been said N times elsewhere, this is about the fact that MS stopped OEMs from bundling other browsers, even though they were allowed to bundle other software.
- pessimizer 14y ago>We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time Where? You're making that up.
- youngtaff 14y agoIE has been bundled in Windows since XP (Win2K even?), Safari has been part of OSX since 2003 Every phone has a browser, and many did before the iPhone launched in 2007 (even if all they had were crappy WAP browsers)
- masklinn 14y ago> It's completely crazy. There's nothing crazy about it. > We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time We've accepted that browsers are necessary, the EU seems to have not accepted an OS natural monopoly can be leveraged into a browser monopoly. Sounds perfectly sane, and a good thing. > what's next fining Apple for not promoting Mozilla or Chrome on iOS? Apple does not have a monopoly marketshare, which lead to the original decision which Microsoft then broke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_compet...
- qntmfred 14y agothey did on iOS (for a while). Safari is bundled with iOS
- ricw 14y agoApple never had a monopoly in either the tablet or phone market. And it doesn't look like it will.
- masklinn 14y ago> they did on iOS (for a while). No. Apple never had a super-majority (or even a majority) of the smartphone marketshare, let alone in the EU where Symbian and BB historically held strong marketshares during iOS's tenure. iOS's best has been 30~40% in some european country (not even EU-wide). Although it does capture the vast majority of profits, but that's not really relevant to antitrust-type cases. I believe Samsung currently has a bigger share of the EU market than iOS. There never was a case of monopolistic abuse from apple in the EU, because they never came close to a monopoly.
- toyg 14y agoOne has to wonder whether the whole "elitist" strategy from Apple isn't, in fact, a way to avoid the sort of responsibilities Microsoft took on, both towards developers, the "enterprise" community and the wider population.
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- mtgx 14y agoI would certainly like to see Apple and Microsoft fined for not allowing other browsers on iOS and Windows RT/WP8, and also for not allowing them to be set as default.
- kawsper 14y agoWhen Apple have a monopoly, they will be part of these rules as well. As soon as you enters monopoly status in the EU, there is certain rules and regulations that you need to comply with.
- masklinn 14y ago> As soon as you enters monopoly status in the EU, there is certain rules and regulations that you need to comply with. So is it in the US as well.
- tomp 14y agoI think more companies should be fined like this, as a percentage of their anual revenue. Except that I would further increase the percentage - up to 50% or even 100%. It's very simple: citizens go to jail, companies can't; so we have to make them pay, a lot. When fines are a fixed amount, the corporations have to simply earn more by committing the crime than they would have to pay if caught; banks are very adept at playing this game.
- Tichy 14y agoSo you would send people to jail for not giving dumb users a browser choice that is only going to confuse them anyway?
- slevin063 14y agothat is upto the court to deicde, tomp got a point that since companies cannot be jailed, they should be fined a percentage of their revenue!
- Tichy 14y agoThis case was a percentage of their revenue? But Tom called for 50% or 100% which seems excessive for such a nonsensical law.
- tomp 14y agoI was pointing out a general principle, not this specific case. What I had in mind is stricter punishment for more black-and-white crimes: not paying employee taxes/social contributions, not issuing receipts and thus avoiding sales tax, etc. I'm pretty sure that if fines were this high, compliance would become very high as well.
- tomp 14y agoLaws should be followed. If laws are bad, you should change the laws, not disregard them.
- CurtHagenlocher 14y agoThat's about $50 per user believed to have been affected by the error.
- netrus 14y agoIt's a high fine, but on the other hand, EU did not ask for much. I am sure MS will spend some more energy on implementing court orders in future.
- meaty 14y agoI understand the premise of the fine, but how is this supposed to help the consumers and businesses who now have to foot the $50 bill per seat?
- robin_reala 14y agoBy that logic no company should ever be fined as it hurts their users.
- netrus 14y agoIf MS raises its prices, it will weaken their market position - that's the punishment for their malbehavior.
- Zirro 14y agoIt's meant to punish Microsoft for failing to comply with the ruling, rather than compensate other browser-makers for the users potentially lost.
- deelowe 14y agoIsn't this the primary difference between civil and criminal law? Additionally, isn't this a civil case? It would seem to me that the entire point of the trail would be to deal with the lost compensation/opportunity cost issue.
- devcpp 14y agoThey probably made much more out of their previous monopoly anyway.
- lucb1e 14y agoI wonder what they do with this money actually. Same as is done with tax money?
- adlpz 14y agoYep, I it does.
- Zirro 14y agoThe money paid to the European Court goes back into the EU budget.
- lucb1e 14y agoOkay, thanks for the reply
- nolok 14y agoAnd lowers the amount member states have to pay (it does not increase the budget)
- lucb1e 14y agoOh that's an interesting detail. That way the EU doesn't enrich itself but it ensures that such "profits" are equally divided among member states. (Because it all saves them money they would otherwise have had to pay.) Nice to know.
- flexie 14y agoHere is the European Commission's press release about the decision: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-196_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-196_en.htm
- meaty 14y agoWhat motivation have Microsoft got to pay this?
- lutusp 14y agoThe right to continue to do business in the EU? That's what's at stake.
- meaty 14y agoI don't think they can just cut off every Microsoft consultancy, every Windows user and throw them out of the EU. If they did, I'd be heading to Brussels with a pitchfork along with about 100 other people at my company.
- arethuza 14y agoI don't think this has anything to do with companies that offer services around Microsoft products - this will be about the Microsoft subsidiaries and assets located within the EU - there will probably be at least one Microsoft legal entity within each country where they have a direct presence, not to mention significant assets like large data centers.
- meaty 14y agoWhich is still an issue for a lot of people who depend on them.
- jermaink 14y agoFor now, it´s "just" browser applications.
- paulsutter 14y agoIt's only a small percentage of the taxes that Microsoft has dodged, er, "structured away". Microsoft can pay the fine using their cash that's stranded overseas without having to repatriate it back to the US and pay taxes on it.
- mmahemoff 14y agoWhat does this mean for ChromeOS or Firefox OS? I'm seriously curious how the legal system considers them in light of this and why MS hasn't mentioned them (to my knowledge) in their defence.
- sgift 14y agoNeither ChromeOS nor FirefoxOS have a majority market share in the OS market that they use to push competitors out of the browser space. No problems for them.
- ioulian 14y agoThat's indeed my thought, why only Microsoft? Apple should also give that choice to their OSX users.
- masklinn 14y ago> That's indeed my thought, why only Microsoft? Abuse of a natural monopoly. > Apple should also give that choice to their OSX users. Stuck at 10% global marketshare (probably below that in the EU), there is no risk Apple will be able to leverage a dominant OS position they don't even remotely have into market distortions in related domains.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoSimple - they do not have de facto market dominance When they do and take actions that are detrimental to the proper functioning of a free market they will get fined as well Microsoft is not evil, not by any normal definition of the word, but they are using power to keep power. That's normal, and that's why anti-trust laws are draconian - something is needed to equalise the odds
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoSimple - they do not have de facto market dominance When they do and take actions that are detrimental to the proper functioning of a free market they will get fined as well Microsoft is not evil, not by any normal definition of the word, but they are using power to keep power. That's normal, and that's why anti-trust laws are draconian - something is needed to equalise the odds
- pepperp 14y agoWhy don't they start fining car manufacturers for not providing customers with a choice of seats made by other manufactures? Antitrust law in the EU is a load of bs, coming from someone who uninstalls IE first thing after installing Windows.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoYou "uninstall IE" eh?
- pepperp 14y agoOr more related, why can Microsoft bundle Paint and Outlook without providing alternate graphic programs and mail clients?
- CurtHagenlocher 14y agoPractically speaking? Because no EU company that sells a paint program or email program has filed a complaint. This action was started by an Opera complaint to the EU -- not because the EU was looking around for things it didn't like.
- MichaelApproved 14y agoYou're misunderstanding. The problem is that Microsoft is using its OS monopoly to try and create another one. These special anticompetetive triggers only come into effect when the company has a monopoly. To be more clear, there is noting illegal about HAVING a monopoly. It's what you do WITH a monopoly that matters. If you don't have a monopoly, you're much less restricted with what you can do. To correct you analogy, it would be if one car company manufactured 90% of the cars and decided to sell the cars with its own tire brand.
- pepperp 14y agoFair, I get you. I still wouldn't have a problem with the corrected analogy. Firstly, I consider the web browser an integral part of an OS even if you have the choice to replace it, so it's not creating a further monopoly, it's just part of the package (just like tires and the body of a car). But more importantly, problems caused by some monopolies (e.g. extortion), and monopolies themselves, have historically been the RESULT of government intervention. Other web browsers obviously can compete considering IE is not the most widely used browser anymore.
- mda 14y agoMicrosoft will probably counter-fine by raising its prices by 1€ in EU. Europe will happily pay for it.
- netrus 14y agoIf they can raise their prices by x without harming their business, why haven't they done it already?
- mda 14y agoIt harms them, but only in the long term. But if a company is fined, increasing prices is the easiest way to balance the numbers. Microsoft already started hiking prices for some of the enterprise products, and for now they can afford this.
- bnegreve 14y agoI disagree with this kind of reaction: 1. I don't think it's useless, when companies raise their price they loose customers so Microsoft will probably be more careful next time. 2. If it is useless in practice, we should change the law but surely not let them do what they want, just because it's useless.
- mda 14y agoSo they fined a company which controls almost entire European Government infrastructure. Company screws up, gets fined, things will continue business as usual, Microsoft still can do whatever they want, at least in the medium term. What EU could do is to actively try to reduce their dependency to a single firm, they can check the future deals, look for alternatives. Then they can have an upper hand and then no companies would screw up a simple thing like this.
- bnegreve 14y ago> What EU could do is to actively try to reduce their dependency to a single firm Yeah well, fighting IE's monopole is trying to reduce dependecy to Microsoft.
- mechatronic 14y agoI think the EU should stop collecting taxes and get American tech giants to fund the public service with spurious fines.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 14y ago> Is iOS required to have the same browser selection screen? iOS is not in a monopolistic position. > Are mobile devices required to have a browser option? If one of them becomes so ubiquitous it is a natural monopoly. > Then why is Windows required to? Because Microsoft is (or at least was, at the time of the ruling) a natural monopoly, and found abusing its desktop OS monopoly into the distortion of other markets. Then they decided to drop their requirements according to court rulings, without said court being consulted. Thus, fine. > I've never heard of anyone complaining about Windows Media Player and Windows Calculator being installed by default. So? > Apple quickly took down their Samsung apology, where is their $700 million fine? You don't seem to be aware that the UK and the EU are different legal and geopolitical entities. You may want to read up on the subject, as well as on the subject of anti-trust legislation.
- zacharyvoase 14y agoEU competition law is a completely different beast from US antitrust law, and whilst I disagree with both forms, the EU definitely suffers from more of a Tall Poppy Syndrome: if you're a market leader with a disproportionate share of the market, it's almost assumed that you're acting in bad faith, and it's up to you to prove you're promoting 'fairness' and 'competition'. If anything is 'anti-competitive' it's rulings like these, which punish people for producing quality software and increase the uncertainty of doing business in the EU. There's a good comparison of the two systems over here: http://www.iie.com/publications/chapters_preview/56/10ie1664.pdf http://www.iie.com/publications/chapters_preview/56/10ie1664...
- tm4n 14y agoThis still seems rather unfair, why are other proprietary operating systems not obliged to incorporate a similar feature? It's Microsoft own operating system and they should be allowed to incorporate whatever piece of software they'd like, albeit to a reasonable extent. On the other hand, I do find it weird there are no repercussions like this for Windows' new secure boot "feature".
- masklinn 14y ago> why are other proprietary operating systems not obliged to incorporate a similar feature? Because "proprietary" is irrelevant, the operative word relevant to the original judgement was "monopoly". And more precisely abuse of a natural monopoly. > It's Microsoft own operating system and they should be allowed to incorporate whatever piece of software they'd like, albeit to a reasonable extent. If they were sitting at a 10% desktop OS market share that would be the case. But over the last ~150 years, natural monopolies have come to be seen as too dangerous (due to their ability to leverage an essentially impregnable stronghold into dominance in other domains through "legal" market distortions) to be left to play by the normal rules, so many first-world countries have additional rules for monopolistic entities to follow. In the EU, companies in dominant positions have "a special responsibility not to allow [their] conduct to impair competition on the common market".
- brudgers 14y agoIn my opinion this sheds some light on Sinofsky's departure. That's quite a fuck-up and it happened on his watch.
- sbennettmcleish 14y agoWhilst it is Microsoft with bags of money and all that, I don't really see how such a huge fine (even for M$) is warranted. Yes, they stopped offering the browser choice, but at what point did someone from EU-HQ contact MS-HQ and tell them they'll be fined if they don't put it back in? Surely it would only take a few weeks at the most to actually re-instate the "feature" once they were threatened with a huge fine. It might have been better for Microsoft to have actually been forced to give money to the other browsers to promote their products, or alternatively, just bundle Firefox/Chrome with Windows and be done with it.
- devcpp 14y agoThey had been threatened a few times before implementing it. It's about time we stopped to play this game and make it clear stuff like that won't be tolerated at all. It wouldn't have been better for Microsoft. They know very well that each product they establish as a monopoly increases their chance of coming back as an all-around industry leader. Actually, I'd be willing to bet this wasn't a "technical error". I've never seen features just unexpectedly disappear out of any piece of software.
- gsnedders 14y agoThere was an explicit order in the previous anti-trust ruling that required it. The ruling stated they could be fined up to 10% of their revenue if they failed to comply. They did not comply. They were fined. It's not like they weren't told about it first.
- Someone 14y agoYes, I stopped obeying the speed limit, but at what point did someone contact me and tell me I'll be fined if I don't stop obeying the speed limit? Surely it would only take a few weeks at the most to actually make me obey the speed limit once I were threatened with a huge fine. Do you think that makes sense?
- kabdib 14y agoAnother trip to the Microsoft piggybank.
- yread 14y agoThis thread seems to be heavily flagged, but nobody mentions in their comment that it's irrelevant or that they've downvoted or flagged it. Any of the flaggers would care to share their reasons?
- marknutter 14y agoThis fine would only make sense if Microsoft prevented users from installing a different browser. Consider an analogy: let's say there's a power company who runs a monopoly on generating electricity. They also provide natural gas services to their customers. There is, however, a bunch of other smaller natural gas companies just a phone call away that people can buy natural gas from; all you have to do is call them and have a technician come and flip a switch in your home. Is it really harmful to the consumer if the power company with the dominant market position doesn't give their customers the phone numbers of the companies competing with its natural gas division? No.
- toyg 14y agoYou don't understand the context. MS did indeed prevent OEMs from installing another browser; it's like they were forcing house builders (which have to use electricity) to connect only their own gas services to new houses. And for that sin, MS will keep paying for a long time; they're basically an ATM for the EU now. This is not great but hey, they do have a history; once a felon, forever a felon, so to speak.
- marknutter 14y agoBut that doesn't fit with the analogy. Downloading and installing a third party browser is next to effortless. Who cares if the OEMs didn't install them? In my analogy the third party gas companies had to send out a technician to install their service, but could presumably do that free of charge to entice the customers to switch to their service.
- toyg 14y agoIt still prevented other companies to have similar, competing agreements with house builders, and inflicted extra costs on them. As such, it's clearly an abuse of a monopolistic position in one market to influence another. In any case, this is not open to debate -- both the American and European justice systems found MS guilty, so that's how it is.
- dworrad 14y agoI'm sorry but what about the ipod, iPad, iPhone.... Can't remember them giving me the choice of where I want to buy media. This must be a joke?
- theklub 14y agoMicrosoft is stupid for making this mistake but the fine is complete BS in the first place. I think it would make more since to fine them over search engine options since that's where the money is actually made. If someone can explain how money is made off the browser alone then please enlighten me.