I think more companies should be fined like this, as a percentage of their anual revenue. Except that I would further increase the percentage - up to 50% or even 100%.
It's very simple: citizens go to jail, companies can't; so we have to make them pay, a lot. When fines are a fixed amount, the corporations have to simply earn more by committing the crime than they would have to pay if caught; banks are very adept at playing this game.
Listen, 50 percent or 100 percent of revenues - that easily leaves you with a bankrupt company. That's not in the interest of consumers.
Microsoft was fined around 1 percent of their global sales for a violation of the terms of a kind of a settlement in an old competition case (antitrust case). Microsoft already knew that if they violated the terms they would be fined up to 10 percent of their global revenues: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-1941_en.htm?local...
Microsoft mostly complied with the terms of the settlement, but not entirely as the OP describes. In that light the 1 percent fine is probably not way off.
If a someone in a corporation is actually committing a crime , then, yes they can go to jail.
If they have committed some kind of civil offense or if it's a criminal offense with no jail term attached then they don't go to jail. There's nothing special about corporations that prevent the people in charge from serving jail time.
This fine is plain stupid. Why EU doesn't fine Google for the same thing on Android. Android is in a monopoly position in EU and I do not saw any broswer choice screen when I first start my Android phone.
This fine would only make sense if Microsoft prevented users from installing a different browser.
Consider an analogy: let's say there's a power company who runs a monopoly on generating electricity. They also provide natural gas services to their customers. There is, however, a bunch of other smaller natural gas companies just a phone call away that people can buy natural gas from; all you have to do is call them and have a technician come and flip a switch in your home. Is it really harmful to the consumer if the power company with the dominant market position doesn't give their customers the phone numbers of the companies competing with its natural gas division? No.
You don't understand the context. MS did indeed prevent OEMs from installing another browser; it's like they were forcing house builders (which have to use electricity) to connect only their own gas services to new houses.
And for that sin, MS will keep paying for a long time; they're basically an ATM for the EU now. This is not great but hey, they do have a history; once a felon, forever a felon, so to speak.
> We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time
We've accepted that browsers are necessary, the EU seems to have not accepted an OS natural monopoly can be leveraged into a browser monopoly. Sounds perfectly sane, and a good thing.
> what's next fining Apple for not promoting Mozilla or Chrome on iOS?
This fine is the outcome of repeated failures on MS’s part to properly implement court-ordered reparations, rather than a direct fine required by the original judgement.
When Apple have a monopoly, they will be part of these rules as well. As soon as you enters monopoly status in the EU, there is certain rules and regulations that you need to comply with.
It's only a small percentage of the taxes that Microsoft has dodged, er, "structured away". Microsoft can pay the fine using their cash that's stranded overseas without having to repatriate it back to the US and pay taxes on it.
Whilst it is Microsoft with bags of money and all that, I don't really see how such a huge fine (even for M$) is warranted.
Yes, they stopped offering the browser choice, but at what point did someone from EU-HQ contact MS-HQ and tell them they'll be fined if they don't put it back in? Surely it would only take a few weeks at the most to actually re-instate the "feature" once they were threatened with a huge fine.
It might have been better for Microsoft to have actually been forced to give money to the other browsers to promote their products, or alternatively, just bundle Firefox/Chrome with Windows and be done with it.
There was an explicit order in the previous anti-trust ruling that required it. The ruling stated they could be fined up to 10% of their revenue if they failed to comply. They did not comply. They were fined.
They had been threatened a few times before implementing it. It's about time we stopped to play this game and make it clear stuff like that won't be tolerated at all.
It wouldn't have been better for Microsoft. They know very well that each product they establish as a monopoly increases their chance of coming back as an all-around industry leader. Actually, I'd be willing to bet this wasn't a "technical error". I've never seen features just unexpectedly disappear out of any piece of software.
Yes, I stopped obeying the speed limit, but at what point did someone contact me and tell me I'll be fined if I don't stop obeying the speed limit? Surely it would only take a few weeks at the most to actually make me obey the speed limit once I were threatened with a huge fine.
This thread seems to be heavily flagged, but nobody mentions in their comment that it's irrelevant or that they've downvoted or flagged it. Any of the flaggers would care to share their reasons?
EU competition law is a completely different beast from US antitrust law, and whilst I disagree with both forms, the EU definitely suffers from more of a Tall Poppy Syndrome: if you're a market leader with a disproportionate share of the market, it's almost assumed that you're acting in bad faith, and it's up to you to prove you're promoting 'fairness' and 'competition'.
If anything is 'anti-competitive' it's rulings like these, which punish people for producing quality software and increase the uncertainty of doing business in the EU.
What does this mean for ChromeOS or Firefox OS? I'm seriously curious how the legal system considers them in light of this and why MS hasn't mentioned them (to my knowledge) in their defence.
Neither ChromeOS nor FirefoxOS have a majority market share in the OS market that they use to push competitors out of the browser space. No problems for them.
Simple - they do not have de facto market dominance
When they do and take actions that are detrimental to the proper functioning of a free market they will get fined as well
Microsoft is not evil, not by any normal definition of the word, but they are using power to keep power. That's normal, and that's why anti-trust laws are draconian - something is needed to equalise the odds
This still seems rather unfair, why are other proprietary operating systems not obliged to incorporate a similar feature? It's Microsoft own operating system and they should be allowed to incorporate whatever piece of software they'd like, albeit to a reasonable extent.
On the other hand, I do find it weird there are no repercussions like this for Windows' new secure boot "feature".
> why are other proprietary operating systems not obliged to incorporate a similar feature?
Because "proprietary" is irrelevant, the operative word relevant to the original judgement was "monopoly". And more precisely abuse of a natural monopoly.
> It's Microsoft own operating system and they should be allowed to incorporate whatever piece of software they'd like, albeit to a reasonable extent.
If they were sitting at a 10% desktop OS market share that would be the case. But over the last ~150 years, natural monopolies have come to be seen as too dangerous (due to their ability to leverage an essentially impregnable stronghold into dominance in other domains through "legal" market distortions) to be left to play by the normal rules, so many first-world countries have additional rules for monopolistic entities to follow.
In the EU, companies in dominant positions have "a special responsibility not to allow [their] conduct to impair competition on the common market".
Microsoft is stupid for making this mistake but the fine is complete BS in the first place. I think it would make more since to fine them over search engine options since that's where the money is actually made. If someone can explain how money is made off the browser alone then please enlighten me.
Ah, it's the "Don't upset corporations or they will punish us with infinite price hikes" mantra.
If they raise the price by €1 and for the sake of argument we assume a net profit of 50%, they would have to sell 1.1 billion packages to recoup the fine (I don't think Microsoft has sold that many software products in their lifetime, but it's a fun little thought experiment). 1.1 billion Windows 8 licences at €280 a piece is €308 billion revenue of which the corporation taxes will flow back to the EU members. It's a win-win for our tax payers!
Why don't they start fining car manufacturers for not providing customers with a choice of seats made by other manufactures? Antitrust law in the EU is a load of bs, coming from someone who uninstalls IE first thing after installing Windows.
You're misunderstanding. The problem is that Microsoft is using its OS monopoly to try and create another one. These special anticompetetive triggers only come into effect when the company has a monopoly.
To be more clear, there is noting illegal about HAVING a monopoly. It's what you do WITH a monopoly that matters. If you don't have a monopoly, you're much less restricted with what you can do.
To correct you analogy, it would be if one car company manufactured 90% of the cars and decided to sell the cars with its own tire brand.
> Is iOS required to have the same browser selection screen?
iOS is not in a monopolistic position.
> Are mobile devices required to have a browser option?
If one of them becomes so ubiquitous it is a natural monopoly.
> Then why is Windows required to?
Because Microsoft is (or at least was, at the time of the ruling) a natural monopoly, and found abusing its desktop OS monopoly into the distortion of other markets. Then they decided to drop their requirements according to court rulings, without said court being consulted. Thus, fine.
> I've never heard of anyone complaining about Windows Media Player and Windows Calculator being installed by default.
So?
> Apple quickly took down their Samsung apology, where is their $700 million fine?
You don't seem to be aware that the UK and the EU are different legal and geopolitical entities. You may want to read up on the subject, as well as on the subject of anti-trust legislation.
tomp|13 years ago
It's very simple: citizens go to jail, companies can't; so we have to make them pay, a lot. When fines are a fixed amount, the corporations have to simply earn more by committing the crime than they would have to pay if caught; banks are very adept at playing this game.
flexie|13 years ago
Microsoft was fined around 1 percent of their global sales for a violation of the terms of a kind of a settlement in an old competition case (antitrust case). Microsoft already knew that if they violated the terms they would be fined up to 10 percent of their global revenues: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-1941_en.htm?local...
Microsoft mostly complied with the terms of the settlement, but not entirely as the OP describes. In that light the 1 percent fine is probably not way off.
learc83|13 years ago
If a someone in a corporation is actually committing a crime , then, yes they can go to jail.
If they have committed some kind of civil offense or if it's a criminal offense with no jail term attached then they don't go to jail. There's nothing special about corporations that prevent the people in charge from serving jail time.
brg1007|13 years ago
Tichy|13 years ago
marknutter|13 years ago
Consider an analogy: let's say there's a power company who runs a monopoly on generating electricity. They also provide natural gas services to their customers. There is, however, a bunch of other smaller natural gas companies just a phone call away that people can buy natural gas from; all you have to do is call them and have a technician come and flip a switch in your home. Is it really harmful to the consumer if the power company with the dominant market position doesn't give their customers the phone numbers of the companies competing with its natural gas division? No.
toyg|13 years ago
And for that sin, MS will keep paying for a long time; they're basically an ATM for the EU now. This is not great but hey, they do have a history; once a felon, forever a felon, so to speak.
youngtaff|13 years ago
We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time, what's next fining Apple for not promoting Mozilla or Chrome on iOS?
masklinn|13 years ago
There's nothing crazy about it.
> We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time
We've accepted that browsers are necessary, the EU seems to have not accepted an OS natural monopoly can be leveraged into a browser monopoly. Sounds perfectly sane, and a good thing.
> what's next fining Apple for not promoting Mozilla or Chrome on iOS?
Apple does not have a monopoly marketshare, which lead to the original decision which Microsoft then broke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_compet...
robin_reala|13 years ago
kawsper|13 years ago
pessimizer|13 years ago
Where? You're making that up.
mtgx|13 years ago
[deleted]
paulsutter|13 years ago
flexie|13 years ago
sbennettmcleish|13 years ago
Yes, they stopped offering the browser choice, but at what point did someone from EU-HQ contact MS-HQ and tell them they'll be fined if they don't put it back in? Surely it would only take a few weeks at the most to actually re-instate the "feature" once they were threatened with a huge fine.
It might have been better for Microsoft to have actually been forced to give money to the other browsers to promote their products, or alternatively, just bundle Firefox/Chrome with Windows and be done with it.
gsnedders|13 years ago
It's not like they weren't told about it first.
devcpp|13 years ago
It wouldn't have been better for Microsoft. They know very well that each product they establish as a monopoly increases their chance of coming back as an all-around industry leader. Actually, I'd be willing to bet this wasn't a "technical error". I've never seen features just unexpectedly disappear out of any piece of software.
Someone|13 years ago
Do you think that makes sense?
yread|13 years ago
CurtHagenlocher|13 years ago
Zirro|13 years ago
netrus|13 years ago
meaty|13 years ago
devcpp|13 years ago
mechatronic|13 years ago
zacharyvoase|13 years ago
If anything is 'anti-competitive' it's rulings like these, which punish people for producing quality software and increase the uncertainty of doing business in the EU.
There's a good comparison of the two systems over here: http://www.iie.com/publications/chapters_preview/56/10ie1664...
mmahemoff|13 years ago
sgift|13 years ago
lifeisstillgood|13 years ago
When they do and take actions that are detrimental to the proper functioning of a free market they will get fined as well
Microsoft is not evil, not by any normal definition of the word, but they are using power to keep power. That's normal, and that's why anti-trust laws are draconian - something is needed to equalise the odds
ioulian|13 years ago
lifeisstillgood|13 years ago
[deleted]
dworrad|13 years ago
tm4n|13 years ago
On the other hand, I do find it weird there are no repercussions like this for Windows' new secure boot "feature".
masklinn|13 years ago
Because "proprietary" is irrelevant, the operative word relevant to the original judgement was "monopoly". And more precisely abuse of a natural monopoly.
> It's Microsoft own operating system and they should be allowed to incorporate whatever piece of software they'd like, albeit to a reasonable extent.
If they were sitting at a 10% desktop OS market share that would be the case. But over the last ~150 years, natural monopolies have come to be seen as too dangerous (due to their ability to leverage an essentially impregnable stronghold into dominance in other domains through "legal" market distortions) to be left to play by the normal rules, so many first-world countries have additional rules for monopolistic entities to follow.
In the EU, companies in dominant positions have "a special responsibility not to allow [their] conduct to impair competition on the common market".
brudgers|13 years ago
theklub|13 years ago
mda|13 years ago
omd|13 years ago
If they raise the price by €1 and for the sake of argument we assume a net profit of 50%, they would have to sell 1.1 billion packages to recoup the fine (I don't think Microsoft has sold that many software products in their lifetime, but it's a fun little thought experiment). 1.1 billion Windows 8 licences at €280 a piece is €308 billion revenue of which the corporation taxes will flow back to the EU members. It's a win-win for our tax payers!
netrus|13 years ago
bnegreve|13 years ago
1. I don't think it's useless, when companies raise their price they loose customers so Microsoft will probably be more careful next time.
2. If it is useless in practice, we should change the law but surely not let them do what they want, just because it's useless.
pepperp|13 years ago
MichaelApproved|13 years ago
To be more clear, there is noting illegal about HAVING a monopoly. It's what you do WITH a monopoly that matters. If you don't have a monopoly, you're much less restricted with what you can do.
To correct you analogy, it would be if one car company manufactured 90% of the cars and decided to sell the cars with its own tire brand.
pepperp|13 years ago
drivebyacct2|13 years ago
jermaink|13 years ago
kabdib|13 years ago
lucb1e|13 years ago
Zirro|13 years ago
adlpz|13 years ago
unknown|13 years ago
[deleted]
masklinn|13 years ago
iOS is not in a monopolistic position.
> Are mobile devices required to have a browser option?
If one of them becomes so ubiquitous it is a natural monopoly.
> Then why is Windows required to?
Because Microsoft is (or at least was, at the time of the ruling) a natural monopoly, and found abusing its desktop OS monopoly into the distortion of other markets. Then they decided to drop their requirements according to court rulings, without said court being consulted. Thus, fine.
> I've never heard of anyone complaining about Windows Media Player and Windows Calculator being installed by default.
So?
> Apple quickly took down their Samsung apology, where is their $700 million fine?
You don't seem to be aware that the UK and the EU are different legal and geopolitical entities. You may want to read up on the subject, as well as on the subject of anti-trust legislation.
meaty|13 years ago
lutusp|13 years ago
vidarh|13 years ago