| Bill Gates suspected competitors of colluding with the European Commission Another high-profile scandal has erupted around Microsoft's activities in Europe. The press service of Bill Gates' company accused EU officials of facilitating secret meetings between Microsoft competitors and British computer expert Dr. Neil Barratt, whose responsibilities include checking the compliance of new Microsoft programs with EU standards. According to ZDNet UK, the largest manufacturer of computer programs included its main competitors - Sun Microsystems, IBM, Oracle and Novell - among the participants in the conspiracy. In response, the chairman of the EU Antimonopoly Commission, Neely Kroes, in an interview with the Financial Times, literally called on Microsoft to answer for its words and pointed out that such insults are fraught with heavy fines. Microsoft nevertheless appealed to the US Supreme Court and the courts of the Southern District of New York and the Northern District of California with a demand to oblige Sun Microsystems, IBM, Oracle and Novell to provide documents indicating their regular contacts with EU representatives. The result of these contacts, according to Microsoft, was Mr. Barrett's famous report, which resulted in a $600 million fine against the corporation in 2004.
However, until now Bill Gates’ company has not been able to seriously resist European antitrust authorities. Probably, even now the corporation's position is very precarious - Microsoft's chief consultant Horacio Gutierras said: “We have serious concerns related to the lack of important documents to protect our rights in this case. Our request to the European Commission for these documents was unsuccessful, so we have now turned to the US judicial authorities for help.” It is possible, experts believe, that this Microsoft campaign is solely for preventive purposes against potential offenders seeking to receive further compensation from the computer giant.
Microsoft, in spite of everything, uses its own methods of confrontation with the EU. Despite a large fine and an order to release an alternative version of the operating system without a media player, it is delaying in every possible way the implementation of the decision of the antimonopoly authorities. In particular, its version of Windows without a media player still remains incompatible with software from other manufacturers. In addition, Microsoft does not strive to provide European developers with all the necessary information about its product. At the end of December, the European Commission threatened to impose a daily fine of up to 2 million euros on Microsoft if it refused to comply with the sanctions. True, this threat was not put into effect. Experts believe that the dispute will drag on, since the parties will not soon agree on the cost of licenses to use Windows code. At the same time, it is possible that in this matter the European Commission will side with Microsoft's competitors, who are convinced that the conglomerate has no right to take money for licenses for network protocols. Denis UVAROV |
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