RSSEC undecided whether Win7/IE8 bundling is unlawful
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 4, 2009, 10:30 AM
In the European Commission's first public comment on the matter since Microsoft changed its mind last Friday, a spokesperson for the EC's Office of Competition Policy told Betanews this morning that it has yet to make up its mind on the matter of whether Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows is specifically unlawful. This despite the EC having sent Microsoft a formal Statement of Objections last January which, although still officially private, Microsoft publicly interpreted as saying such bundling was unlawful.
"The Commission has not taken a final view on the lawfulness of Microsoft providing Windows with Internet Explorer preinstalled," stated EC press officer Maria Javorova this morning. "This issue is the subject of pending proceedings, the outcome of which cannot be prejudged, and the fact that Microsoft has announced its intention to continue this practice in the latest version of Windows to be shipped in Europe does not change that."
Javorova was responding to an inquiry from Betanews that contrasted Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith's statement from July 24 that his company would pursue shipping Windows 7 E to European customers without a browser, in the interest of complying with European law, with Deputy Counsel Dave Heiner's statement a week later, saying Microsoft would change course and ship Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 8, acting on the advice of its technology partners. The latter statement could be interpreted as saying that Microsoft is more concerned about its partners than with the law, but that's only if we know for sure that bundling IE8 with Win7 is expressly unlawful.
After having received the Statement from the EC last January, it declined to make any portion of it public. But Microsoft, in its own public response, announced, "The Statement of Objections states that the remedies put in place by the US courts in 2002 following antitrust proceedings in Washington, DC do not make the inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows lawful under European Union law."
Javorova's statement to Betanews would appear to imply that the EC believes such bundling may be unlawful, but has not actually made that determination. Thus if Microsoft should decide at some time between now and the next round of proceedings to distribute Windows 7 with IE8, it may only risk being asked not to do so in the future, but would not be in violation of EC law at present.
"The Commission is currently investigating the suitability of Microsoft's ballot screen proposal to address the concerns raised in those pending proceedings," the press officer's statement concluded.
Actually, I bet they are waiting for Microsoft to bundle the software before they decide it is unlawful.
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|They apparently need to have the decision made for them, since they obviously do not know what they really want.
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|I really feel that the EU has lost touch wiht reality on this, and I have a simple question.
If MS is required to offer competition software what does that do to their warrantee?
Right, Mozilla screws up and MS has to fix it?
Good Grief, Adobe can't even handle 64 bit!
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|Microsoft has received so much bad publicity the last serveral for many issues, but has to thank the EC for making it sympathetic again, bc of their unreasonable demands and bias against Microsoft.
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|They are never satisfied, thank god europeans are not this idiotic, only the governing body is. Not that ours is any better (US).
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|The EC where given a chance to respond to options of 'e' and the 'choose a browser' ballot screen but they haven't officially responded.
How can they (the EC) expect a company to just sit on a billion dollar product indefinately while they make their minds up what 'they' want Microsoft to do about it.
I live in the UK and wish Microsoft had originally had the balls to simply say 'oh well, we won't sell our products in the eu then' and see what the reaction was.
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|"say 'oh well, we won't sell our products in the eu then' and see what the reaction was."
Lawsuits against Microsoft from their shareholders, greatly decreased market share, rise of market share of alternative OSes in the EU, and/or the EC invalidating all of Microsoft's patents/copyrights within the EC.
Basically, it would be a Very Bad Thing™.
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|At least someone recognises why that would be commercial suicide for Microsoft. You wouldn't be penalising the EU by denying them Microsoft products (like so many people seem to think). You'd actually be giving the competition the best leg up they could ever get: Linux and Apple OSes would flourish.
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|You are of course perfectly correct but what I simply meant was it would have been nice if Microsoft could have in some way 'stuck two fingers up' (to use an English turn of phrase) to the EU so as to say 'if you don't like it don't use the product' or similar.
Perhaps my having said '..and wish Microsoft had originally had the balls to simply say..' was a bit OTT.
It's for policy reasons such as this I wish that the UK wasn't associated with Europe as we get screwed by our ties to them all the time.
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|"Linux and Apple OSes would flourish."
That would have merit, except Apple and the far too many choices of Linux distributions already violate what the EU claims Microsoft is in violation of... bundling their own web browser.
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|yountmj:
Say it with me: "Monopoly". Now, what's the market share of Apple's Mac OS X? Linux?
Different rules apply within a specific market to companies that control that market.
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|Of cource the EC has not decided yet. They are a bunch of idiots with limited knowledge on software.
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|Hang on, hang on, hang on, now wait a minute.
"In the European Commission's first public comment on the matter since Microsoft changed its mind last Friday, a spokesperson for the EC's Office of Competition Policy told Betanews this morning that it has yet to make up its mind on the matter of whether Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows is specifically unlawful."
Now didn't I say this about 3 months ago and EVERYONE shot me down in flames?????
"This despite the EC having sent Microsoft a formal Statement of Objections last January which, although still officially private, Microsoft publicly interpreted as saying such bundling was unlawful."
And didn't I also say this about 3 months ago when EVERYONE shot me down in flames?????
You lot make me laugh. [tsk]
Didn't I saaaaay that a decision had not yet been made hey?? [tut tut]
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|Yes, you did. At least you weren't the only one. Remember me trying to convince "blabbery" of this?
That was back in March '04... {Betanews.com}
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|it's all bull, the bundling of IE is a moot point today. I like the fact that you can "deactivate ie" in Win7. I wish they would offer the same with WMP
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|Windows Media Player? you can deactivate that in 7 as well... along with Media Center, DVD Maker...
have you used Windows 7?
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|lets see, Apple/Safari , Google OS will be a uh browser in and of itself and then we have Windows 7 with IE8 which MS have pretty much said all along that browser is part of the overall out of box experience, which at least i tend to agree... and apparently the firs two folks i listed up there think so too
what to do with Microsoft, make them ship an OS without a browser and may i remind folks its 2009 and thats all anyone does anymore, is go online! you can't really do much to start with without a browser... *sighs
i think the ballot screen is the only approach right now that makes any sense, though... i think being forced to advertise another product that isn't your own is unlawful but whatever, its not like half the things happening today make much sense
if Google OS ever blows up, i hope someone over there in the EU will say wait a minute, what about Firefox? Safari... and force them to load alt browsers, their covering their bases though using a problem Microsoft was forced to fix, the browser actually being part of the OS itself, well played Google well played
all bulls***
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