EU Executive Body Questions Microsoft's Efforts
Posted on: Sunday, 20 March 2005, 09:00 CST
A year after the European Commission issued its antitrust ruling against Microsoft, the commission says it has "strong doubts" that Microsoft will obey its order.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the commission said its investigation of the market had shown that the U.S.-based company's plans fell short of what the European body ordered it last March to do.
The commission plans to discuss its concerns with Microsoft and could impose fines of as much as 5 percent of the company's daily worldwide sales until it decides that Microsoft is complying. In its 2004 ruling, the commission complained about Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position in the server software market and in music and video-playing software, which it bundled into its Windows operating system. Microsoft repeated on Thursday that it was "fully committed" to complying with the commission's ruling.
In a written statement, Dirk Delmartino, a spokesman for Microsoft, said that the company submitted plans to the commission last May on how it would license its operating system information and that it provided additional information in the autumn.
"Finally we got feedback today," Delmartino said. "We look forward to reviewing this feedback." Microsoft, he said, would "work through the issues raised" over the coming days.
Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for the EU competition authority, said the commission had conducted tests of Microsoft's proposals for licensing the underlying programming of its server software to PC manufacturers and other software makers.
He said the commission suspected that Microsoft's plan discriminated against open-source software companies by denying them access to coding that would make their systems operate together. In addition, companies that buy the license to Windows code "have to take it all in one license and so pay for things they don't need," Todd said.
Source: International Herald Tribune
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