EU Hounds Microsoft - Threatens $2M Euros Daily Fine

Bloomberg reports on an ongoing battle between Microsoft and the European Union regulators who have fined an additional 280.5 million euros (US$357)citing antitrust violations. Claims state the world's largest software maker has disregarded an order to weaken its Windows monopoly.

Microsoft has been ordered by the European Commission to essentially tell its rivals Windows trade secrets. Rivals are to be licensed details on how Windows communicates across a network.

This penalty comes after the original 2004 497 million euro fine.

Microsoft is appealing.

Microsoft, whose software runs on about 95 percent of the world's personal computers, faces additional penalties of as much as 3 million euros a day if it continues to resist the antitrust decision, Neelie Kroes, a European Competition Commissioner, said.

An appeal was made in April of this year stating the EU's case "is flawed and the order violates its right to protect trade secrets."

Ronald Cass, president of Cass & Associates, a legal consulting firm, stated in an e-mail:

Rather than await the court's ruling, the commission has decided to use brute bureaucratic force to implement its decision and to punish what it sees as recalcitrance by Microsoft.

If the EU is not waiting for a court decision prior to placing daily fines on Microsoft what is its motive? Courts take years to make decisions, nothing new in the business world, so what makes the EU strong arm Microsoft with the first ever antitrust fine?

Today's fine comes in at a lower than expected price, 1.5 million euros daily. Less than the threatened 2 million euros daily from December. The EU's interest in Microsoft reflects in a stock value loss of 5.4% since March 24, 2004.

To read the full story click here.

The suit seems hasty and yet outdated.

The 2004 ruling, detailed in a 302-page report, came 2 1/2 years after Microsoft reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. That decision forced the company to allow PC makers to install rival software programs and also ordered Microsoft to release technical information.

Microsoft to date has taken steps to comply with each ruling prior to being fined. In a statement Brad Smith, Microsoft's top lawyer, claimed:

Every time we've been asked to do something we've done it. We didn't need a fine to get us to agree to do something.

Moreover, the original fine has been paid. The company began shipping a version of Windows, sans media player, after president of the Court of First Instance Bo Vesterdorf denied Microsoft's delay request in 2004 on order of pending the appeal.

The information provided by Microsoft contains some 12,000 pages of technical documentation. Additionally, Microsoft offers "unlimited free support and plans to license the course code, or programming instructions, for Windows."

I must agree with Mike Sax's, Chairman of the Association for Competitive Technology, opinion when he said:

If the teams at Red Hat and IBM aren't able to create interoperable software with all these resources, they simply aren't trying.

Why should Microsoft be forced to reveal trade secrets when plenty of other companies have the resources to create something similar. While I fully believe regulations should be in place to avoid a monopoly the competition should try harder and not ask for handouts.

Microsoft wasn't built in a day. What took competitors so long to notice and why are they now dragging their feet asking for hand outs?

"The real issue here is not about compliance, it is about clarity," Smith said. Microsoft has 300 employees ``working around the clock'' and plans to deliver the final piece of information to the EU by July 24, he said.

Search marketing, NOT internet advertising

A newsletter from the past week finally made it's way out of my junk mail and into my view. This little tidbit I found quite interesting, simply because it is very true.

To be clearer, search marketing is not Internet advertising. The brilliance of search is how it induces a direct marketing opportunity while simultaneously helping consumers achieve their immediate goals.

This I don't fully agree with though:

Internet advertising actually prevents consumers from realizing their primary goal of speed and efficiency--and as far as privacy goes, well, what's a few cookies among strangers?

Why don't I agree? Because to cut out 50% of advertising would backlash onto the searcher. People aren't going to start paying for search when they've enjoyed it "free" for so long, paying only with having to deal with a few ads here and there. Let advertisers pay for search while searchers continue to reap the benefits.

Plus, all those annoying ads are beginning to be more regulated. SPAM is being combated, if not to full efficiency at least webmasters and SEMs hate it enough to avoid while working to eliminate SPAM themselves.

And cookies are nothing new. Cookies appear everywhere, they're on your computer as soon as you enter a username/password. The thing is, they should be disclosed as to why the cookies are being placed. Then what's the problem?

Or consumers can clean out their cookies on a regular basis. But that turns the effort back on the searcher/computer user, not the "industry" (AKA "The Man").

I do not post the newsletter here because I do not find it actually useful beyond the fews quotes above. The ideas it is "going back to" for advertising merely state the obvious. Move away from SPAMMY ads such as pop-ups, pop-unders, floating or expanding ads, etc. Don't place cookies without announcing them and asking for acceptance, etc. Common sense strategies that true webmasters and SEMs already know.

People don't like pop-ups.
~ Thanks that's nothing new.

People don't like cookies they aren't aware of.
~ And...you're point being what? Beating a dead horse? We know this already and professionals have already moved away from this.

So, I guess what I should do is unsubscribe to this newsletter that doesn't offer much insight and I'm not sure how I got on the mailing list anyway. Cookie anyone?

World Cup

Well I didn't do much work yesterday, though I did accomplish some things.

I was too tied up in the second half of the World Cup series Ithe first half I was running errands).

While I did successfully build a few backlinks and get some marketing done I couldn't help but watch the World Cup. Wow, talk about intense.

Being that the World Cup was being projected across a screen larger than 72" in the conference room I was working in didn't help concentration.

Zidane, man you knocked MY breath away. What a way to end a career. Are you proud? Probably not, you could have saved France from such a defeat.

Viva Italia! I was rooting for you anyway, since you beat Germany in the last game I watched :) Plus my husband is of French decent so naturally I had to choose the rival (I'm of Irish decent, so neither one swayed me by origin).

Next year I vow to watch more often and more enthusiastically.

I want to hear what was allegedly said to Zidane to cause such a show stopper. Apparently last time he did something like this it was because of a "your family" comment. So FIFA what's the word?

Until next year!