Microsoft accused of infringing EU rules

[goddog]

Soleron said:

What I really want is for the EU to tackle MS-OEM deals where OEMs pay for every computer sold regardless of whether it has Windows or not. If they don't comply, MS raises the price of WIndows and reduces the "marketing money" they get (i.e. a rebate). This means it is never economic for OEMs to preload a free OS, because if they do they have to pay for a Windows license anyway but don't recieve the rebate funds. So they computer ends up more expensive with a free OS. See: Dell's Ubuntu PCs.

Here's an example. The costs are arbitrary but illustrate the point. You can see that if an OEM sells many more Windows PCs than Free OS PCs, it is cheaper to go with the contract deal and the monopoly is perpetuated.

	Windows Cost	Marketing money	PC Hardware Cost	Cost of OS	Total PC Cost
OEM is not under contract, installs Windows	$100	$0	$500	$100	$600
OEM is not under contract, installs free OS	$0	$0	$500	$0	$500
OEM under contract, installs Windows	$50	$15	$500	$35	$535
OEM under contract, installs free OS	$50	$0	$500	$50	$550

 

I was unaware MS was still able to do this, I thought they had been forced to stop as part of the US anit trust case settling, though it would not be suprising for them not to have. 

 

I guess the other side to this is MS could force them to just buy OEM at price with out advertising suplment anymore, and push it them selves, without the discount 3rd party vendors may not be able to afford it anyway, or at least not vs the 3rd parties that take the deal. or take the deal secretly