RSSMicrosoft Under Fire in South Korea
By Ed Oswald | Published August 23, 2005, 12:36 PM
While much has been made of Microsoft's antitrust woes in both the European Union and the United States, not much has been said about its problems in other areas of the world.
One place where Microsoft is still fighting claims of monopolistic behavior is South Korea, and that country's Fair Trade Commission said Tuesday that it is close to a decision on allegations that the company shut out local messaging clients by bundling Windows Messenger with its operating system.
Daum Communications, operator of a South Korean Internet portal, first raised the antitrust concerns in September 2001. Daum operates chat software and says Microsoft harmed its business by using its position in the market to quickly grow its own messaging client.
The probe also includes a complaint by RealNetworks, which says the bundling of Windows Media Player is an unfair practice to competitors. Microsoft says the complaints are without merit and plans to cooperate.
If the issues raised by Daum and Real sound familiar, that's because they are; similar complaints have been filed in both the United States and in Europe. Based on those two cases, it's likely some kind of sanction will be handed down when the South Korean FTC issues a final ruling in late September.
In the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust ruling nearly resulted in the breakup of Microsoft, and in Europe, Redmond was fined 497 million euros and ordered to remove Windows Media Player from its operating system.
well I sure hate Microsoft. I was writing this awesome calculator program when I was taking VB a few years ago, but you know what. No one would buy it. WHY, cause the big bad Microsoft bundled it with the OS. I mean come on everyone knows the only thing an operating system should do is run other peoples crapware. ----
Please they can bundle what ever they want its their program isn't it. That's like having the sharpie company (black markers) sue adobe for having the red eye removal feature in there program. When is enough going to be enough already.
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|This is such pure and utter bullcrap. How is this allowed to continue?
EVERY OS has a browser and media player included. Why the hell is Windows the only one picked on?
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|Go to Control Panel\AdminstrativeTools\Services.
The windows messenger can be temporarily disabled or stopped completely. I have never used the program bundled with XP. Remember when it generated a bunch of junk advertising on our desk tops about three years ago?
Few people are buying copies of Windows XP without the media player in Europe! The Koreans must learn this lesson all over again. It's just too easy, to use something else if we prefer to do so.
REAL audio isn't as popular as MP-3, WMA, OGG or the new AAC audio format. And that is why fewer people are downloading their bloatware with it's advertising. I was never interested in giving them my life history on that damnned registration form either...
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|100% agreed.
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|That isn't Windows Messenger that is the Messenger service. Something completely different all together.
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|here we go again..
If I really wanted Real Audio or any instant messaging stuff I would download it.
It's true that microsoft bundles their annoyances with it, but you have your choice to use something else, that has never been taken away.
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|Yeap! Strip Windows off all the boundled junk - messengers, players, etc! OS must be OS, not a large collection of general usage applications. I like notepad, wordpad, calc etc - simple software for simple everyday tasks. Old media player was very good too (that's why i'm using Media Player Classic now). But all thease complete-functionality applications, which are shipped with OS - really not fun. And not fair. The most unfair app is IE. Users are not supposed to choose a browser they like, because they actually don't know what there is something else! They're forced to use IE. Same with Messenger.
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|Do you actually believe all the bull crap you just spouted?
"They're forced to use IE. Same with Messenger."
Complete and total ignorance.
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|How are you going to download another browser if there isn't one already included to download it with in windows?
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|it's not impossible :) try using FTP :)
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|Microsoft is monopolizing the market in many areas of software production...however they did work hard to reach the status and produce exeptional software. Everybody is just picking on microsoft since they know its big and rich and are looking for a pay-off. The irony is that the software they are creating is targetted to run on microsoft windows systems which to me seems really stupid.
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|I do hate the Windows Messenger and the fact that you have to delete it manualy to get rid of the darn thing. Maybe this is a good thing. However I am Pro MS 75% of the time.
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|hmm? manually? not true, go to add remove programs, ad remove components, scroll down, uncheck the messenger ^^
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|Nope it will still be there.
EDIT: And so will Windows Media Player. You have to turn off WFP to get rid of that one.
EDIT2:http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Windows_File_Protection_Switcher/1106499902/1
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|what ya want it so dead ya gotta shoot it with a shotgun? mm fair enough i spose, it does turn it off rather effectively, i love that with the release of msn messenger 7.0 (and maybe earlier versions too) it doesn't uninstall windows messenger x_x;; took me awhile to do as much as i did.
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|Amazing...the title of the headline based on the same announcement at TomsHardware is titled "Ruling in Microsoft's Korean antitrust case expected in September". Article headlines can mislead people....
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