Whilst I'm loathe to continue blogging so much about Microsoft, I wanted to highlight the antitrust judgement that the European courts handed back to them today. Microsoft was up for antitrust behaviour in Europe for a couple of reasons; firstly shipping their Media Player with their operating system; it's a similar thing to what has happened to them in the past with the browser, Internet Explorer. And, while with IE, there was a genuine, if FUD-y reason for the browser to be included in the OS (basically, much of the same back end is used for browsing your files), Windows Media Player provides few, if any, system wide benefits. Secondly, refusing to provide sufficient details of how their server technology works so that other companies could interoperate with MS servers.
So the European courts decided to tell MS that i) they needed to release a copy of Windows sans Media Player, which they (briefly) did, and ii) to pay a 497m. euro fine. The Judge also went on to say that MS's server technology, especially the API's (the parts that interact with other software), could not be considered protected intellectual property, and that to maintain that position was anti-competitive.
In other words, yah boo sucks, Microsoft, take your mediocre software back to the US. And while you're on your way, perhaps you'd like to mull over the fact that your latest operating system, much-vaunted and praised by yourselves, is tanking in every market place possible.
