Microsoft suffers stunning EU antitrust defeat | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft suffers stunning EU antitrust defeat

ca.news.yahoo.com

4 pointsUltrapreneur5 comments

I think Microsoft makes a lot of crappy products. I think their key offerings are overpriced. Their FUD tactics do not impress me. I cannot, however, agree with this ruling. This quote really bothered me:

Asked how the Commission would assess progress in the Microsoft case, she said: "A market level of much less than 95 percent would be a way of measuring success ... You can't draw a line and say exactly 50 (percent) is correct, but a significant drop in market share is what we would like to see."

That, to me, seems entirely wrong. They're talking about a market where, for a long time, Microsoft was the only one providing usable services. Instead of encouraging other OS producers to improve their offerings, they're instead trying to level the playing field by levying penalties against Microsoft. This is an utterly counterproductive way to improve diversity and competitiveness. It reminds me of a scene from Atlas Shrugged.

IBM, Oracle and some other big software house actually charge more than Microsoft (sometime even double). I know this because I've talked to one of the MS product unit manager regarding MS prices.

I don't think there's any company that has offering such as MSDN subscription.

In the sense of their products are crappy.... I'd say that is a statement with no reasonable arguments. Vista Ultimate comes with Windows Media Center which is far more usable and better than Apple Front Row.

I would extend my argument further that there is no software company out there that can provide the services/features as good as MS given its size. Most companies died before they can even reach half of MS features. You can argue that's a feature bloat but I need them rather than a set of dis-integrate software with poor interop.

You're right, I didn't really give any solid reasons for what I said, but I didn't intend to. My point was to state that I, personally, do not like Microsoft, but I am still opposed to the decision that was made against them.

The text you quoted points to a real flaw in thinking on the part of the EU commission. If the commission has a problem with Microsoft due to monopoly practices, that is one thing. However, once they state they are seeking for Microsoft's products to reach a certain point of market share, they are on a very slippery slope.

This just points to socialist thinking in that the EU commission wants the market to be divided 'fairly'. The commission should be focused solely on specific incidences of anti-competitive practices and specific resolutions. They should never be interested in arranging the market just right so that companyA has 50% share, companyB has 20%, etc.

The fact that the commission is focusing on this really brings credibility questions to mind and makes me wonder what their real goals are.

At the risk of bringing another contentious point into an already contentious topic, if this were an EU-based company, would the findings be the same?

About the only advantage of the lack of democracy in the European Commission is that it's very difficult to buy people who have security of tenure...

I don't know that the term "stunning" is wholly appropriate (yes, I know it was Yahoo's choice) - perhaps "comprehensive" or "thorough" would be better, as I don't think anyone in the EU was particularly surprised at the outcome. I found what happened (or not) in the US much more confounding.

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