It's highly unusual for the European Commission to reveal its proposed remedy in an antitrust case before the defendant company has responded and a final decision document drafted. The Commission has departed from that tradition in the pending Microsoft investigation.
====== If the Commission's preliminary conclusions as outlined in the recent statement of objections were confirmed, the Commission would intend to impose remedies that enabled users and manufacturers to make an unbiased choice between Internet Explorer and competing third party web browsers," Jonathan Todd, spokesperson for EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, told EurActiv. "To this end, Microsoft will be obliged to design Windows in a way that allows users "to choose which competing web browser(s) instead of, or in addition to, Internet Explorer they want to install and which one they want to have as default," Todd explained. ... ... This line stems from the mistakes the Commission recognised it had made by imposing remedies on Microsoft in the Media Player case (see background). Indeed, although Microsoft is now obliged to offer a version of Windows without Media Player, for the most part, users are opting for the readily available bundled offer, which provides extra software at the same price. "That remedy was rubbish," acknowledged an official in the Commission's competition department. " [more] ===== <http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/eu-oblige-microsoft-offer-competitors-browsers/article-179602>. The current Microsoft investigation has apparently been bifurcated into two proceedings. Still pending is its investigation into alleged unlawful monopoly maintenance in regard to MS Office and related products. It is unclear as to which proceeding the Commission will decide the Opera complaint's allegations regarding Microsoft's alleged undermining of open Web standards. Very closely-related issues are raised in the Office investigation having to do with OpenDocument, OOXML, MS Office's binary formats, and communications protocols such as are used in Sharepoint. Best regards, Paul -- Universal Interoperability Council <http:www.universal-interop-council.org> _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
