Microsoft has finally submitted a response to the European Commission over the EC’s findings that the company violated antitrust regulations by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. It’s response was a request for an oral hearing where it will defend itself, reports a story by the IDG News Service.
No date has been set for the hearing, although the IDG News Service says that it will take place in a matter of weeks. Interested third parties will be invited to attend. These could include Opera Software, the company that initiated the suit, as well as Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser who went on record shortly after decrying the Internet Explorer/Windows combo. Others who might weigh in include the expected competitors including Google and perhaps IBM, Oracle, Red Hat and other software firms represented by the trade group the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS).
Interestingly, Microsoft won’t be alone. The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), a trade group representing small and medium-size IT firms, is expected to come and voice support for Microsoft. The story further states:
“The case echoes a previous legal challenge to Microsoft in Europe. In 2004 the Commission ruled that tying Media Player, software that plays video and music tracks, into Windows was illegal for the same reason bundling IE is. It ordered Microsoft to launch a second version of Windows that had the media player stripped out. However, this remedy is widely seen as being useless.”
The EC has already issued a preliminary finding against Microsoft, but until the Microsoft defense is heard, any penalties are unknown. If the the EC chooses to impose a technical solution — such as forcing Microsoft to offer Windows without a bundled version of Internet Explorer — a plan that some insiders say Microsoft may be preparing to do with Windows 7 — how much this would affect the browser market is unclear. Enterprises IT folks usually sanction a particular browser for corporate use, and so far, that browser has been mostly Internet Explorer.
Would enterprises jump ship to Firefox, Chrome or Opera if they had to choose to install and maintain a browser? Probably not. Even without a bundled browser, Microsoft can still make IE more appealing for Windows users in a thousand other ways.
Visit the Microsoft Subnet web site for more news, blogs, podcasts. Subscribe to all Microsoft Subnet bloggers. Sign up for the bi-weekly Microsoft newsletter. (Click on News/Microsoft News Alert.)
Microsoft’s anti-trust issues continue with DOJ, EUMicrosoft OpsMgr R2 release candidate available today, will ship end of JuneMicrosoft Vine, Web Sandbox and other nifty beta appsWindows 7 arrives this week, supports “virtual” XP12 killer freebie SharePoint add-ons Cloud computing is cheaper, greener but not yet enterprise ready.Net Services: Microsoft’s key to cloud security and Java interoperabilityApril giveaways galore: Microsoft UC and Office 2007 books, free training from Global Knowledge Follow Microsoft Subnet on Twitter
