| scottie said: It seems high, but you have to consider It was either deliberate, or caused by a deliberate policy of not checking to make sure that they are obeying the law. MS makes so much money in general, and would have made so much extra money in the long term from extra people using their services (They bundle Bing into I.E. which they bundle into Windows) that a 'sensible' fine would be completely unnoticed by MS. It's why some countries have speeding fines as a % of income. A $100 fine is going to reduce how much poor people speed, but the rich will just continue to speed and pay the fines as required. |
What are you talking about? This is not even about obeying any law, it's about a step Microsoft voluntarily took to placate officials (who had no justifiable case in the first place) having technical problems. There is no antitrust 'monopoly' law being broken when the browser in question (IE) has well below 50% market share in the EU. There's absolutley zero evidence that IE has any semblance of a monopoly in the EU or anywhere in the world. There shouldn't have been even a $1 fine because nothing illegal was done at any point during this made up 'issue'. MS did wrong in Windows 95/98 by locking down competing browsers, nothing like that has happened in this case. It's a bunch of self-important bureaucrats who have to make themselves feel useful by taking on the 'evil' corporations, even if no laws were broken. In reality, the EU is the bully in this case.
