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EU Hits Microsoft with €899 Million Fine
The European Commission on Wednesday announced that it was fining Microsoft €899 million (about US$1.4 billion as the dollar keeps sliding) for violating an anti-trust order issued in 2004. It brings the software giant’s total amounts paid in fines to $2.4 billion. To Microsoft, it’s just a cost of doing business.
The Associated Press reported
The software titan fought hard against the EU's 2004 decision that ordered it to share interoperability information with rivals and sell a version of Windows without media software, taking an appeal to an EU court that it lost last September. It was fined again in July 2006 — $357 million — for failing to obey that order. The EU alleged that Microsoft withheld crucial interoperability information to squeeze into a new market and damage rivals that make programs for workgroup servers that help office computers connect to each other and to printers and faxes. The company delayed complying with the EU order for three years, the EU said, only making changes on Oct. 22 to the patent licenses it charges companies that need data to help them make software that works with Microsoft.
Microsoft earned $14.07 billion on $51.12 billion in worldwide revenue during its last fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007. The maximum under EU law would have been about €1.5 billion, and the money funds the EU’s appalling farm subsidies and its inadequate research grants. It is unclear if the company will appeal.
The money is really just a slap on the wrist for Microsoft. David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, told the Washington Post, “Financially it’s not significant; it is much more of a scary number to everybody else than it is to Microsoft.” Everybody else includes Google, Qualcomm, Intel and Rambus, which are all under investigation by the EU.
Where this really is going to hurt Microsoft is in the Yahoo acquisition. With this kind of behavior from the company, the EU may just decide not to approve the merger. Or at very least, will make significantly heavier demands than it might have otherwise done. Otherwise, this is merely a tax for doing business Microsoft-style in Europe.
© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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