PC World: EU Warns Microsoft Over Vista Features

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,125243,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,125243,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The European Commission has specific antitrust concerns about Vista, Microsoft's long-awaited new operating system, commission spokesperson Jonathan Todd said today. "We are concerned about the possibility that Vista will include software elements which are available separately either sold by Microsoft or by other software companies," Todd said. "There is also the possibility that we won't have all the technical information needed for competitors to make their software interoperable with Vista," he added. Microsoft's top lawyer in Europe, Horacio Guttierez, said in a telephone interview today that adding such functions to the operating system is essential if Microsoft is to meet customer demand. "I know consumers want more-secure computer systems," he said."</i><br /><br />I'm sure that when the EU Commission started their investigations into Microsoft a few years ago, they had good reason to - Microsoft was tried and convicted in the US courts of monopolistic behaviour in the '90s. But I have to wonder if the ongoing spar between the Commission and Microsoft hasn't gotten out of hand - they seem to be lining up to try and block the addition of Windows Defender into Windows Vista. As much as I can appreciate how nervous anti-spyware software developers are right now at the thought of Windows Defender embedded in every shipping copy of Windows Vista, I have to weigh that against the massive damage, frustration, and loss of data/identity that spyware/malware causes every day across the world - and I definitely want to see Windows Vista come, right out of the box, ready to help defend customers against those problems. What the EU Commission is doing doesn't seem to be to the benefit of consumers. What's your take on this?

[Felix Torres]

What the EU Commission is doing doesn't seem to be to the benefit of consumers. What's your take on this?

It isn't.
And it isn't supposed to, either.
Its all politics.

European antitrust law isn't about real or even potential damage to consumers but about "damage to competitors" who feel they have not achieved the market share they are "entitled" to.
(And do consider that the "damaged" competitors are the likes of Real Networks and SUN.)

Which is to say that a company can be guilty of EU-style anti-trust just by playing fairly and winning big in the marketplace; it is not about how a company wins but about winning big. Period.
The EU gripes with MS, Intel, (and soon, Apple) are that they are not rolling over and playing dead for their competitors.

In the MS case, they want to control how the product is designed and they want to expropriate MS's IP so that Open Source products can get access to their propietary their tech for free.

And evil MS refuses to give away their technology for free.

Again, this is not about consumers.
It is about the BrusselCrats *controlling* the marketplace--picking winners and losers--not about MS actions, legal or otherwise; MS simply has too much market share and they make too much money.
Plus, they are an american company.

Economic nationalism lives; consumers be damned...

[jmulder]

And evil MS refuses to give away their technology for free.

Worse yet, MS DOES give its technology away for free..to customers.

It's like that old Simpsons episode where Krusty will 'drop pants for food'. When Bart asks how business is, Krusty replies with something to the effect of: "lousy...that old guy is giving it away for free!".

[Filip Norrgard]

What the EU Commission is doing doesn't seem to be to the benefit of consumers. What's your take on this?
It isn't.
And it isn't supposed to, either.
Its all politics.

European antitrust law isn't about real or even potential damage to consumers but about "damage to competitors" who feel they have not achieved the market share they are "entitled" to.
You're completely right here: the goal of this antitrust thing is probably not the best for the customers in the short run. But, the idea is to in the long run allow other alternatives to Microsoft's technologies to co-exist in the market. That might lead to the customers winning, but not neccesarily.



Which is to say that a company can be guilty of EU-style anti-trust just by playing fairly and winning big in the marketplace; it is not about how a company wins but about winning big. Period.

Name one company who has played fair and later been "anti-trusted" by the EU. :)



In the MS case, they want to control how the product is designed and they want to expropriate MS's IP so that Open Source products can get access to their propietary their tech for free.

They don't want a total control, but control only certain aspects of the product. For example, the remove Windows Media Player thing was a strange move whereas I would have like to see other media player alternatives included with the installation of Windows instead of stripping it of all multimedia playing capabilities. (Hey, I can dream can't I? :) )

That "open the IP"-stuff is also a strange move, but my other half seems to understand the motivation for idea. Since Microsoft is the global leader in operating system and office program sales, they should share their IP more and with less restrictions (than previously) to others who wish to use it. I'm not totally sure either it was meant to be shared for zero costs to the open-source community either or if that was some crazy liberal's idea.

The "true" winners of this proposition might be the open source comminity since they are supposedly to get some sort of "protection" from patent legal cases by Microsoft and others, which could otherwise threaten the existanse of millions of open source projects.


Plus, they are an american company.

So are Real and AMD last time I checked. Please don't assume that the EU are anti-American just because the EU Commission goes after an American company that has largely monopoly and practices that aim to tie in their customers. Also, as a side note: not all French are strongly anti-American just because a part of them have strongly expressed their disapprovement of certain US actions. As for the iTunes law in France, I see it as a good thing that I can get music bought from the iTMS and load it on my Nokia N91 instead of a crappy songnumber limited Moto with the iTunes brand stamped on it. That's just my 0.02 €. :)

Strangly as it sounds, the EU is effectively trying to prevent the formation of monopolies within their borders, which I have found to be a good thing although it is somewhat bureucratic. For example, prices on mobile phone calls are at a ridiculously low rate here since the EU laws opened up the GSM networks and thus encouraged competition amongst the smaller and bigger operators. (I could go on with this forever... :D )

On the other hand, in the US, there have been and are monopolies in a lot bigger extent than there has been in the EU (ok, or maybe we should limit this to Finland since I know that market the best ;) ). It is not that the US government encourages monopolies to form, but it is the government that is not interviening when the monopolies start to form (say hello to Ma Bell, AT&amp;T anyone?).

I know that the US POV on it is that it is supposed to be free, liberal market. The big goverment shouldn't think of interviening with the works of the companies fusioning and such. For me, the best market is where I as the consumer can have alternatives and choices, instead of the one where there can be only one choice to make and it is "always the right one" for me.

[Felix Torres]

Which is to say that a company can be guilty of EU-style anti-trust just by playing fairly and winning big in the marketplace; it is not about how a company wins but about winning big. Period.

Name one company who has played fair and later been "anti-trusted" by the EU. :)



Will three do?

http://hellerehrman.com/docs/en/imshealth.pdf

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/mergers/eucourtmerger2.htm

http://econ.ucsc.edu/faculty/dan/101/EUAnitTrust.pdf

The first one, in particular, relates to a company that was ordered, like MS, to license their proprietary IP to a wannabe competitor who had failed in the marketplace, on the competitor's terms.
None did anything particularly evil, either.
All were overturned after lengthy (and costly) fights.

BTW, check this l'il bit of legalese:

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/gilbert/wp/Gilbert_TTBER_alj_10_05_04.pdf




Plus, they are an american company.

So are Real and AMD last time I checked.




Yup.
You familiar with the concept of venue shopping?

In legal circles that is where a plaintiff looks for a place where the legal system is skewed or prejudiced in their favor.
Responsible judges and regulators throw out cases of venue shopping.
Less, ahem, scrupulous operators play along with it or, even worse, pile on their own agendas.
(Two examples for you: In the recent GOOGLE vs MS flap over Google's employee poaching, the Employee in question resides in Washington State, he signed a Washington State contract with a Washington State company and when he was sued by MS, Google's first move was to sue in Silicon Valley, California, to try to get the suit moved to the epicenter of ABM. It was denied.
(Not so, in the case of Real Networks vs MS, both of which are Washington State companies. Nope. That case, too, was filed in Silicon Valley, but the judge was a whole less scrupulous and the case proceded.)

Regulators live to regulate and bureaucrats have to justify their existence.
And when it comes to dumping on American companies and technologies, nobody does it as often and as blatantly as the Brusselcrats. They practically *live* to skew the market in favor of *their* chosen favorites, regardless of the harm to consumers.

Think: Monsanto--their products were banned EU-wide until, gee-whiz, a Swiss company came out with an alternative and suddenly it was okay to sell that kind of stuff in Europe, after all.

Think: Boeing, having to finance their own R&amp;D while Airbus gets a free ride at *your* expense without having to repay anything.

Think: Galileo, a totally redundant and unnecessary alternative to the Global GPS system that sends 10+billion Euros worth of *your* money to European contractors.

Think: Internet root servers. Europe stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Iran, China, and Libya to demand the UN strip control of the Internet root servers from ICANN, so the Brusselcrats can regulate and tax every single transaction and communication that runs on it.

Heck, under *that* kind of administration, if I had a bone to pick with an American company, I'd be rushing to file in Europe too. Preferably with the European Commision Bureaucrats (as opposed to the courts, which, so-far, are not as aggressive as the Bureaucrats).

Worth noting that MS has been fined and is being warred upon by unelected bureacrats, not judges.
They have yet to have their day in court and they've already been slapped around with half a billion in fines (coming from all our pockets) and spent further millions to develop and distribute a product nobody is buying just because the bureaucrats think they know more than their own consumers. Tyranny by Bureaucracy is only different in degree, not kind, than tyranny by Mullahs or Commissars.

On this side of the pond, the whole "fine-em before they've gone to court" thing smacks more of "taxation-without-representation".
Ours or yours.

Difference is, we *chose* not to live that way.

Peace.
For now...
&lt;shrug>

[Jason Dunn]

For example, the remove Windows Media Player thing was a strange move whereas I would have like to see other media player alternatives included with the installation of Windows instead of stripping it of all multimedia playing capabilities.

This is exactly what I was talking about though - the EU Commission demanded Microsoft release a version of Windows XP without Windows Media Player, but no one bought it, because who would want to? Who would want to buy a version of Windows with LESS features than before? The whole thing smacks of insanity to me - Microsoft isn't going to bundle Winamp or Quicktime inside Windows XP anymore than Coke would ship two cans of Pepsi in a six-pack. That's just not the way things work. Besides, every laptop I've bought always comes with other media players - it's up to the OEMs to decide what to put on their machines. Back in the browser war days, Microsoft pressured OEMs to not put Netscape on shipping machines, but I haven't heard of anything similar happening today.

This thread has really got me thinking that this is the next "cold war": EU economic socialism versus North American capitalism. Very curious...

[Felix Torres]

This thread has really got me thinking that this is the next "cold war": EU economic socialism versus North American capitalism. Very curious...

Oh, its not in the future; its been going on for almost 20 years.

And you are 100% right about the root conflict, but the fight is a bit broader that just that.
There are no less than four concepts fighting it out:
- US-style entrepreneurial capitalism, based on individual rights and responsibilities, which seeks to maximize the *opportunity* to build a life for yourself
- French-style Dirigisme, where the government regulates the market and corporations are meant to be extensions/servants of the state; with a stated goal of reducing individual risk, even if it reduces opportunity; less chance to fail, less chance to succeed.
- Kleptocracies like Russia where government milks corporation for the personal gain of a few; the most common system on the planet, BTW; a recent mutation (Venezuela, Bolivia) couches it in leftist populist terms. It may be a transitory phase to moving to a form of:
- Asian-style merchantilism, where the state and the corporations maintain a rather incestuos relationship and its hard to see who serves whom; in most countries (Japan, Korea) the government is generally subservient to the corporations, in others (Indonesia, Singapore, China) the corporations are out-right extensions of the government.
Have to keep in mind that all these trends are present in most countries and changes are possible; India seems to be *starting* to move from democratic socialism (the other name for the euro model) after 40 years of limited progress to an entrepreneurial model. Similarly, there are followers of the entrepreneurial social contract in europe (they are an impotent minority now) as well as followers of Euro-style interventionism in the US (in the extreme left wing of the democratic party, the extreme right of the republicans--really!--and the vestigial Green party); it is not cast in concrete (yet) that either side will stay true to its current model. But the fight to establish the legitimacy of the various models is on and not stoping for decades.

If you are interested in the reasons for the growing differences between the european socio-economic contract and the North American model and why it will likely lead to open warfare of one kind or another, you may want to check out Philip Bobbit's THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES; it is a scholarly historical treatise on the roots of war (of all types), the evolution of the concept of a state, and the legitimacy of regimes. Dry, dead serious reading, but illuminating.

Long discussion as to why europeans feel themselves threatened and offended by north american entrepreneurial capitalism (while americans barely recognize the deep differences, so far) but its roots go back centuries and have nothing to do with actual american political or corporate practices. It is all rooted in internal euro-politics.

Which is why they are hitting MS with anti-trust laws in two areas where MS doesn't even approach monopoly status; server *applications* software and media players. In servers MS has maybe 40% market share and in server apps even less; in media players, as pointed out right here, iTunes is the actual leader.

The actual driver here is that the Brusselcrats (not my term, btw; I'm merely quoting the locals' usage) want to see a dominant european software industry and see MS as a stumbling block because they won't give away their IP. Their chosen tool is open source software because it fits their socio-political model instead of the entrepreneurial model (the much decried anglo-saxon model).
Which is why consumers don't factor into it and neither does economics.

And why there is a fair chance (but only fair-to-middling; REAL and SUN shopped for a good venue) that MS, like some of the companies cited above, will prevail in court, even though realistically there is no rational reason why they should have been cited over these issues in the first place.

Welcome to the 21st century.