Microsoft has lost an appeal against a fine of $690m which the European Commission had imposed following an anti-trust suit.
The European Court of First Instance dismissed the appeal and upheld the decision that Microsoft was abusing its market dominance by shipping Windows with Media Player built in.
The European Commission has been bleating on about how good this is for consumer choice and how consumers will be much better off as a result of the decision.
What a load of rubbish.
Firstly, who will pay for the $690m fine? Microsoft? Of course not, they’ll just bump up their prices some more and the consumer will pay. Already, the price of software in Europe is higher than the US and in England it’s even higher.
Secondly, what’s wrong with shipping Media Player with Windows? It’s a free download from the Microsoft website - what difference will it make to the price? A couple of quid as a token gesture to stop the European Commission from suing them again? A previous anti-trust suit made them take Java out of Windows - now, whenever I install Windows I have to go and download Java from the internet before I can browse a website that uses Java.
It doesn’t make Windows better, it makes it more irritating for me, the consumer. I want my Windows disc to be so chock full of programs and gadgets and tools that I don’t have to spend half an hour downloading stuff that I need from the internet before Windows is useful. I want to be able to use Java-enabled websites out of the box. I want a media player out of the box. Windows Media Player is great - it does pretty much everything I want it to. It doesn’t play DVD’s but I’ve got something else to do that. It has a “thing” for Microsoft’s proprietry formats when you rip CD’s but my MP3 Player is quite happy with WMA files.
This ruling was nothing to do with giving choice to the consumer. It was about extracting loads of cash for the EU propaganda fund from the big bad American corporation. I don’t very often defend Microsoft - I don’t like the way they do business - but in this case, they were in the right and you have no idea how much it pains me to say that.