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Microsoft has been fined a record £680million for failing to comply with legal orders designed to reverse its anti-competitive behaviour of 2004. Back then, EU officials said Microsoft failed to supply ‘interoperability information’ at a reasonable price to allow other servers to be compatible with its Windows PCs. It also unfairly bundled MS Media Player with all Windows PCs, serving to muscle out other providers of similar software, resulting in less choice for consumers. These messages came again yesterday from Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner, who said Redmond’s actions had affected millions of consumers and offices worldwide. Handing down a fine of €899m, she said Microsoft was the first company in fifty years of EU competition policy to be fined for failure to comply with an antitrust ruling. It is in addition to earlier fines of £212m (€278m) in July 2006 and the initial fine of £376m (€493m) of March 2004, which EU’s second highest court upheld last year, despite Microsoft’s objections . In January, Microsoft said it would face fines up to €1.5 billion related to the dispute, meaning it underestimated the cost of its current defiance. “Today’s decision concludes that the royalties that Microsoft charged for the information licence – i.e. access to the interoperability information - prior to 22 October 2007 were unreasonable,” the Commission ruled yesterday. “Microsoft therefore failed to comply with the March 2004 Decision for three years, thereby continuing the behaviour confirmed as illegal by the Court of First Instance.” Alongside Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has just unveiled a new approach to its application interfaces, which is designed to ‘increase openness’ and “drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.” Feb 28, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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