EU Drops Browser Antitrust Charges Against Microsoft, Won’t Fine
16 Dec 2009 // 27 comments // Internet Development
The EU said this morning that it is dropping antitrust charges against Microsoft after the software giant agreed to give Windows OS users a choice of up to 12 other Web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Opera.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Microsoft will need to implement a ballot screen that lets users in Europe replace Internet Explorer with another browser, starting March 2010. The deal also means computer manufacturers will now be able to ship PCs in Europe that do not come pre-installed with IE.
If it honors the agreement, Microsoft will avoid further EU fines. Microsoft has already paid €1.68 billion ($2.44 billion) in fines over EU antitrust actions in the past 10 years.
The company did get a warning, though: Microsoft can be fined up to 10 percent of yearly global turnover – without regulators having to prove their case – if the company fails to stick to its legally-binding commitment for the next five years. This commitment will be checked by regulators every other six months, the EU said. The European Union is also able to review the entire deal at the end of 2011.
European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes in a statement said millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by gaining “free browser choice”, and that it will also spur browser makers “to innovate and offer people better browsers in the future”.
In December 2007, Opera Software urged the European Commission to investigate Microsoft’s abuse of its dominant market position and the company’s bundling of Internet Explorer with its still dominant Windows operating system. After a two-year investigation, in January 2009, the EU charged Microsoft with monopoly abuse. The anti-trust suit was later joined by Google and Mozilla.
Opera Software was quick to release a statement following the announcement of the settlement. Jon von Tetzchner, Opera’s CEO:
“This is a victory for the future of the Web. This decision is also a celebration of open Web standards, as these shared guidelines are the necessary ingredients for innovation on the Web. Opera has long been at the forefront of Web standards, which ensures that people have equal access to the Web anytime, anywhere and on any device. We see the outcome of the EU’s investigation as a testament to our mission.”
The European Union estimates that some 100 million computers will likely display the screen by mid-March 2010, and around 30 million new computers will show it over the next five years.
(Image via Komonews)
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Tags: Against, all, Antitrust, antitrust actions, antitrust charges, Browser, browser choice, browser makers, Charges, choice, Chrome, Company, dominant market position, dominant market position eu, dominant windows, Drops, Europe, European, european consumers, Fine, global turnover, Google, google chrome, graph turnover, Jon von Tetzchner, Microsoft, microsoft turnover 2009, Opera, opera software, os map, proxy, Software, software giant, sony ericsson manufacturer website forr hardware support free, sony ericsson turnover, sony global turnover, sony turnover, sony turnover 2009, sony turnover graph of 2009, sony turnover in 2009, Start, turnover chart of sony company, turnover graph, turnover graphs, turnover of five year of sony, turnover of sony ericsson, turnover of sony mobiles, Union, Web, Windows, Won’t
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under Internet Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
So whats next?
McDonalds beeing forced to offer a selection of 12 different brands of water with the happy meal.
Because they use their dominant position in the fastfood market to push bonaqua on the people?
c´mon give me a break
+1
They are basically forbidding MS to do what their main competitor (Apple) is not only allowed to do but what is essentially one of their biggest selling points.
Oh and btw:
I am a Apple evangelist through and trough.
See this? me, the apple fanboy, defending MS?
I mean how twistet can a court ruling be that causes this kind of behaviour….
Sure choice is good. But there is a huge difference between allowing the user to choose wich browser they want to use (wich MS did) and beeing forced to advertise the products of competitors (which MS is now basically forced to do).
This is completely ridiculus and unfair. Why does this only apply to MS and not to Apple who does basically the same thing (OS X + Safari)? Why is this limited to a choice of browsers and doesnt include media players or email clients or whatnot?
What about the selection of browsers that MS will choose? only 12? sure there are more browsers to choose from. What about the ones left out? What about the order in which the browser alternatives will be presented? Will they order it randomly? alphabetically? by release date? size of the download? the amount of features? how many points the browser achieves in sunspider test?
Whatever way MS will choose to do it. There will be somebody complaining about it. And now that the EU made this ridiculus demands they have to listen to any other complaint that will be issued on related matters. Way to go…
But IE was there before Chrome or Opera existed. It’s not like Microsoft used it’s dominant position to push them out of market, they were not there when it happened. They simply made a product and now want a piece of Microsoft’s market share for free.
i don’t think many people agree with you. one of apple’s big selling points for its computers is that you plug it in, and it “just works.” you don’t have to go through some lengthy setup ritual where you choose from a variety of options for what most people take as basic functionality. the fact that apple uses this is as a reason to buy their product coupled with the fact that such an ad scheme works should be enough to demonstrate that there is at least some significant portion of the population who wants to simply plug in and go rather than navigating through a maze of choices about apps between which they likely cannot tell the difference.
I dont see how this will make much difference. Most people who only use IE because it comes with windows will simply choose IE from the list when they see its Microsoft’s browser.
Why dont the EU now investigate them for forming a cartel by only including certain browsers, since this will make it even harder than before for firms with browsers not on the list to compete.
A lot of people here are missing the point.
Microsoft is in a monopolistic position. You can’t say the same about Apple. The crux of this case was that they were using their monopolistic position in one market (operating systems) to unduly influence another market (browser software).
The impact this has had on the web is tremendous. For a supposedly tech-savvy audience, nobody here should have to have IE6’s legacy explained to them… suffice to say, it is lamented by web developers everywhere for holding back the web and wasting a lot of time that could otherwise be spent doing something productive and making the web a better experience all round. This is why the somewhat controversial Chrome Frame was invented in the first place.
This decision will also help to make a lot of people aware that there is choice in the first place, because many people don’t even know what a browser is. It might be rather heavy-handed, but not nearly as much as half of the analogies in the responses above, which are completely wide of the mark.
This is a bit of a silly suit, but using your dominance in a market place, to push your own products, not related to the market place you dominate (OS) is enough for an anti-trust suit.
The ford analogy doesn’t work, IE is not microsoft’s money maker (doesn’t make any for them as far as I know), so it does not hurt their profit margin at all to do this.
It would be more like buying a games console, and only playing the games it came with, because no one told you there where others.
In my opinion this ballot screen will add value to the OS, and I wouldn’t mind a ballot screen for other software such as a media player etc.
Choice is good, especially when it comes to free software.
Google ships Android with Gmail, Google Maps, etc. Google Chrome ships with Chrome. Mac and iPhone ships with Safari. Every system ships with their default browser. There is nothing wrong for Windows to ship with IE.
Now it’s just adding unnecessary confusing to ordinary users to use the system. This EU case is evil and just try to rob money from a US company. For those browers who wants to beat IE, they need to pay the advertising fees instead of getting free advertising from the new “browser choice” stuff. The whole thing is unfair and evil.
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At this point, I think the EU is just kinda using MS as a piggybank and hitting them with an antitrust suit whenever they want to go to lunch and a movie. It’s not like Microsoft shouldn’t have ever been brought to task for its actions in this regard, but this is absurd.
That’s not the logic. MS wasn’t forced to unbundle because it was a hardware maker, or because it makes an OS.
It was because Internet Explorer was unfairly using its dominiant position to hinder competition.
Read: http://www.pall…ws-7-in-europe/ (go through the comments also)
http://my.opera…osoft-antitrust
I understand the EU still has massive hate for Microsoft, but this lawsuit was ridiculous.
I think Microsoft should set Bing as the default search engine on all the browsers in the ballot. Its not about the browser, but the search revenue.
I agree.
This case is a joke. I have opened up my trusty IE and surfed to Firefox.com everytime I do an install with no Microsoft roadblocks.
As well, formatting and throwing on Ubuntu is not an issue.
Just because Microsoft has earned the household recognition with it’s browser and most users don’t “know” of others, doesn’t mean they should be sued because they don’t offer them competition.
That’s like walking into Ford and before getting the keys on a new Mustang the guy tells you, “Hold on, just so I don’t get sued, have you tried all the other competition yet? Would you like to? Let me make those arrangements.”
Lol.
How would you use Windows Update without IE anyways?
Thus ends the most pointless and futile lawsuit of recent years.
i don’t like M$, so its hard for me to say that i think they got a raw deal on this one… agreed its not always “easy” for a semi computer literate individual to successfully remove IE from a windows OS, but all of the other points are also valid, its no as if it blocks its competitors sites, and you certainly wont see apple rush to give the same options when it comes to Mac OS’s and Safari which probably explains why you didn’t see there name tagged to the bottom of complainer’s along with Google and Mozilla (theyre keeping their heads low).
the most unfortunate part of this stupid ruling is that its going to open the floodgates on many other pre loaded pieces of software, including media players, notepads, photo editing and all the other applications the public take for granted every day.
were going to get to a point where you load you OS and your barraged by choices;
Media Player, ITunes or VLC?
Mozilla, Opera or Chrome?
Paint or Paint.net?
Notepad or Notepad++?
congrats for all freedom lovers
Why does it need to be uninstalled exactly? I have IE installed and I only ever use Firefox. What’s the problem?
@Toni. Unfortunately MS don’t make uninstalling IE simple. Here’s one gotcha which I found after about 30 seconds with google: “You cannot uninstall Internet Explorer 8 if it is set as not removable. This occurs if you install Internet Explorer 8 before you install Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP. If this scenario applies to you, then you must uninstall SP3 before you can uninstall Internet Explorer 8.”
http://support….t.com/kb/957700
Exactly, it’s ridiculous this case ever happened, it’s a joke. Microsoft earned this position and they shouldn’t be punished for doing it.
Uh, no they don’t. I had no problem going to firefox.com, opera.com or google.com/chrome from Internet Explorer. They don’t publicise the alternatives, sure, but they definitely don’t hide the choice.
The entire case was a joke, if a company wants to ship it’s own software with it’s operating system, why shouldn’t they?
Does Apple ship Macs with a choice of Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera or something else?
As the matter of fact, applying the same logic here, Apple as a hardware manufacturer shouldn’t be allowed to ship computers with their software solution pre-installed. How will people see the choice to go for Windows?
This logic is just plain stupid. Beat Microsoft on the market if you can, don’t go crying to court asking to “hold Microsoft while you hit them”.
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