After years of silence, European antitrust regulators have finally issued a ruling in their ongoing investigation of Microsoft's abuses, and it isn't pretty: On Wednesday, the European Union (EU) announced that Microsoft was unfairly leveraging its "overly dominant position" with Windows.
By tying Windows Media Player to its dominant Windows OS, the EU says, Microsoft is unfairly harming competitors such as Apple QuickTime and RealNetworks RealOne.
Finally, the EU is giving Microsoft a last opportunity to reply to the charges before it inflicts punishment on the company. Experts expect the EU to extensively fine Microsoft; the European Commission (EC), the EU's executive arm, has the power to fine the company up to 10 percent of its worldwide annual revenue.
"Evidence confirms and in many respects bolsters the Commission's earlier finding that Microsoft is leveraging its dominant position from the PC into low-end servers and that Microsoft's tying of Windows Media Player to the Windows PC operating system weakens competition on the merits, stifles product innovation, and ultimately reduces consumer choice," the Commission wrote in a release.
"We have now a very strong case," an EC spokesperson said. "The case as it stands now is too strong to ignore." Mario Monti, the EU Competition Commissioner, said that Microsoft's abuses were "still ongoing," according to information collected from companies in Europe and the United States.
He pledged to seek the strongest measures ever sought in an antitrust case in order to prevent Microsoft from continuing its abuse.
Among his demands: that Microsoft reveal the application programming interfaces (APIs) that bind Windows Media Player (WMP) to Windows, allowing competitors to tie their applications to the OS in the same fashion.
Additionally, he will require that Microsoft offer a stripped-down Windows version that does not include WMP, and a version of Windows that includes WMP as well as competing media player software. Also, the EU will require Microsoft to disclose APIs that will help competitors in the servers space create applications and services that run as well with Microsoft's server products as those from Microsoft do.
Monti's strong words mirror those of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who oversaw the original Microsoft antitrust case in the US. However, Jackson's remedy--breaking up Microsoft--was eventually dropped by an appellate court, and the company was able to craft a favourable settlement with Bush administration's corporation-friendly US Department of Justice (DOJ). Microsoft won't have the same bargaining time in Europe, however, where antitrust laws a bit more clear-cut. Furthermore, EU antitrust officials are sensitive about their 2001 decision to veto the merger of General Electric (GE) and Honeywell, two American companies. Furor over that decision was an EC embarrassment, and Monti and his lieutenants are conscious of the fact that the Microsoft case could be another politically important case for the commission. For this reason, they've taken the time to build a strong, defensible case.
Copyright (c) 2003 CMP Media LLC