Microsoft Fined ?331M. Ouch!

[bowser123]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3563697.stm

Apparently Microsoft have been fined ?331M for anti-competiveness.
It's peanuts to them, but still, that's a **** load of money.
It's all to do with them bundling stuff like IE and WMP with Windows.

Personally don't understand the problem myself. Nobody is forced to use either and alternatives can be downloaded for free, which are mostly superior.

As a mac user it seems even stranger that they are in trouble for this.
I mean the applications that come with OSX that are Apple made are numerous. Safari as a web browser, Quicktime for multi-media, iTunes for music, iMovie for video editing, iChat for video conferencing and iPhoto for pictures. They're even shacked up with Adobe so that making any file into a PDF is just a case of clicking 1 option.
The thing is macs are so stable and easy to use purely because everything, from software to hardware is made by Apple in most cases.

I realize that Apple have less than 1/10 of the market share compared to Microsoft's 9/10, but still, it seems strange that Microsoft are in trouble yet Apple aren't.

[Pij]

I havnt been to the link but i remember correctly when it first started.

It wasnt that they was bundling the software but that you couldnt remove the software without knackering something else off (shared .dll's etc) so it was being anti competitive as you couldnt get rid of the damn stuff.

i never saw it as a huge problem either, would preffer if there was a law suit to get MS to dispose of all the legacy icons and other crap floating about in the windows/winnt dir.

Edit : from reading the link it seems my babble above was a different case

[SharkAttack]

Who takes the 331 million?

[mid]

"Who takes the 331 million?"

The EU themselves - goes into the general budget, same way the Government keep the money from people fined in UK courts.

I read the headline as "Microsoft find ?331M" - which seems like a lot for even BillG's sofa...

[DjSatansfury]

I can understand why they have done it, but:

Personally, although i hate WMP, i'd rather use that, then any pile of steaming ****e that Apple or Real Networks have to offer

[broomey]

I can understand why they have done it, but:

Personally, although i hate WMP, i'd rather use that, then any pile of steaming ****e that Apple or Real Networks have to offer

plus would you really want to have to go purchase another companies browser and media player after paying ?80+ for windows

[DjSatansfury]

Exactly

And i read somewhere else, its not like Apple do the same with their OS or anything is it (Or was it bowser who said it ? )

[Lyris]

Why the hell should a business be fined for trying to compete? That's ludicrous.

[mid]

Why the hell should a business be fined for trying to compete?

They haven't. They've been fined for exploiting their near monopoly in one area (the OS) to leverage their poor position in another (media serving) by bundling in just the client for their particular proprietary codec.

The EU have been thrashing around what to do for months, and have thankfully decided on the correct action of demanding they ship with none, rather than force them to include Real and Quicktime.

[Freddo]

the thing the EU dont get is that realOne is ****ty spyware laden crap, and MS should be given a medal and asked to make it so windows cant run realOne products.

tbfh.

[evilmatt]

Whether this decision is right or wrong though, its taken years to come to it and now MS will just appeal and it'll take more years for that to get sorted out. So I don't think it really means an awful lot at the moment.

[SonicMarmite]

3 things will happen now:

1. 99% of PC customers will buy Windows XP with the media version bundled in, instead of the lite version, and all proprietory PC vendors will also use the full version of XP.
2. Those same 99% of PC customers will probably pay more money for it.
3. Realnetworks will have no increase in business at all, and will realise that people don`t buy realplayer BECAUSE ITS ****.