Microsoft fined £630M by EU
MICROSOFT was fined £630 million by the European Commission today for anti-competitive behaviour.
The company has now been penalised a record £1.2 billion by Brussels for unfair competition in the computer market.
That amounts to more than half Microsoft’s annual turnover.
Today’s penalty was for breaches of EU competition policy dating back to March 2004.
Microsoft charged “unreasonable” prices for access to crucial software information to enable its rivals to operate in a market dominated by Microsoft.
“Microsoft is the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision”, said EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.
She said she hoped today’s penalty closed a “dark chapter” in Microsoft’s record of failure to comply with Commission rules on fair competition.
But the saga does not end today: only last month the Commission opened two new investigations into alleged anti-competitive behaviour by Microsoft.
For years the company has been accused of illegally rigging the market by obliging customers to use Microsoft software with its computers, and by refusing to provide rival computer firms with the necessary coded information to enable competing software to be compatible with Microsoft equipment.
Last September, European Court judges backed the Commission’s claims that Microsoft was abusing its dominant position in the market and ordered the company to disclose the necessary documentation to allow non-Microsoft equipment to become fully operational with computers using Microsoft’s Windows software.
Source: Daily Express
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March 5th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Once more, Microsoft has been slapped with a fine! How long will it take before they wake up and join the rest of us here on Planet Earth? If this keeps up, they will HAVE to either go out of business (which is not a good thing) or get the job done by clearing the record and complying with the Commission’s ruling. May be Steve Ballmer’s lack of a Business degree is showing?!
March 5th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Everytime I see one of these articles, I SWEAR Bill gates just pulls out his wallet, writes a check, and fires some people.
March 6th, 2008 at 1:08 am
At his level…like dimitry said: it just another check, bad publicity equals 0. it’s not like people around the world will stop using windows