My colleague over at Microsoft Watch, Joe Wilcox, declared that “Microsoft bowed before the EU and took its whipping.” Eh, after a couple of days to look at the decision, I dont think so. At best, Id say the European Union got the more favorable end of a draw.
To refresh your memory, heres the background. The EU opened a series of anti-monopoly investigations against Microsoft starting in 1999. The EU found that Microsoft had abused its dominance of the operating systems market both by tying WMP (Windows Media Player) to Windows and by failing to release information about Windows to competitors in the server market.
After long talks with Microsoft, the EU gave up trying to get Microsoft to be cooperative and slapped the company with a 497 million euro fine in March 2004.
/zimages/1/28571.gifRead the full story on Linux-Watch:Who Really Won in Microsoft vs. the EU?
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