Miles Quaritch
Member
It seems like a silly thing for Microsoft to do on purpose, considering it did nothing to stop IE's downward trend in market share.
Surprised to see Firefox declining. Chrome continues its inexorable rise though.
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Microsoft Prepares For a Huge EU Fine (maximum 10% of last year's revenues)
- Thread starter guit3457
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Surprised to see Firefox declining. Chrome continues its inexorable rise though.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
TBF it's mostly due to the monopoly windows has, which means anything that comes difficult with it has a lot more sway than in other OS. Hence why internet explorer media player etc dominated for so long.
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
Fair enough but I just feel that the law should apply equally to everyone. For example, if Apple finds itself in a similar market position as MS in the EU then they too could be in the firing line as well ... why not nip it in the bud and make sure that all companies follow the law from the outset?
Still it was extremely stupid and moronic of MS to be caught out like this again.
Are you sure they would be classed as monopolies though? the os market is crazy in favour os windows even though we might here its shit os and windows 8 is failing etc etc.
Im sure if they get to the point ms is in the os market in other markets they very well will find themselfs under the microscope of the crazy eu laws.
Well rules have to be enforced, if you break them you have to pay the price.
On another note , if MS ships an xbox that blocks used games, I see another huge fine in their future. Even steam is slowly advancing towards being able to resell games (see DOTA 2 keys being sold on steam market for as low as .2 $)
On another note , if MS ships an xbox that blocks used games, I see another huge fine in their future. Even steam is slowly advancing towards being able to resell games (see DOTA 2 keys being sold on steam market for as low as .2 $)
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
They do. The law is that thou shalt not abuse a dominant market position. Anyone who doesn't have a dominant market position is following that law.
NemesisPrime
Banned
While Apple and Google get away with everything in the EU.
xemumanic
Member
And it's funny to see the biggest whiner who advocated for this (and worse I think) was Opera, and the browser ballot, when it was working, never did anything for them.
The chart alone proves how useless all this is. IE's heyday has LONG since been over (even though it's gotten much better in recent releases), and fining MS didn't start that trend. Better browsers from the competition did. Competition that started in the midst of IE's dominance.
The chart alone proves how useless all this is. IE's heyday has LONG since been over (even though it's gotten much better in recent releases), and fining MS didn't start that trend. Better browsers from the competition did. Competition that started in the midst of IE's dominance.
fabricated backlash
Member
Italy, Greece, Spain... lol
So it gets divided up evenly to the governments?
CadetMahoney
Member
So is Chrome really where it's at now, I always thought firefox was the most popular.
No they don't! Apple stopped selling AppleCare in Italy because they got fined too many times by the authorities for not informing the client their product has a standard warranty and they do not need to buy AppleCare the moment they buy a new iDevice/Mac. They also got taken to court many times for having a one year warranty instead of two(and they changed it to two after they lost the suit).
We wish!
fabricated backlash
Member
Nah, that was a joke. It's more likely going to be distributed among the branches of the EU.
I have no idea really, just a guess.
Firefox was a great browser before they started bloating it with massive RAM use and updates out the ass every two month.
Firefox used to be the go to browser because even old machines could run it well and fast, now it's a resource hogging bloated POS.
Firefox on Android is even worse, a complete waste of time. It runs horrible, has stability issues en masse and is just a nightmare to operate.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Chrome is the most popular, partly because it's good and partly...because google is abusing its dominant search monopoly to promote it.
I think Firefox is the best browser at the moment after the last years worth of memshrink, but chrome was the best for a time.
sublimit
Banned
That's a good question.I wish we knew the answer.
This was the only way they could afford to upgrade all the EU computers to Windows 8.
.Psychotext
Member
Lavish lunches and expense budgets.
So true...
Seems really silly to be fining Microsoft now when they aren't even the leader in the sector anymore, chrome has by far the lions share of the market now.
Anti trust is highly anti consumer as it is, Microsoft can't give me a free text editor because other companies want to charge, great stuff i can't wait to pay all that money.
Anti trust is highly anti consumer as it is, Microsoft can't give me a free text editor because other companies want to charge, great stuff i can't wait to pay all that money.
electroshockwave
Member
I hope this isn't considered thread whining but should this really be in Gaming? It's about browsers and has no relation to Xbox or Microsoft's game division so it seems like it should be in off topic.
Same deal for any Sony news that isn't about SCE or Playstation. I don't think they should be in Gaming either but they always seem to be put here.
Same deal for any Sony news that isn't about SCE or Playstation. I don't think they should be in Gaming either but they always seem to be put here.
Calm Killer
In all media, only true fans who consume every book, film, game, or pog collection deserve to know what's going on.
IMO...Microsoft should just stop supporting the EU and not sale anything there after the way the EU has imposed fines against them. I know a lot of people will disagree with me but I call BS.
Well Chrome is ridiculously lightweight where are Firefox is using more and more memory. A lot of the popular and great add-ons are being ported or developed for Chrome now. I'll give you an example, I've got 2 windows with 12 tabs and about 8 add-on loaded up with Firefox at the moment and that's using 793mb of memory. Chrome would use between a 5th and a 10th of that.
Because you are not forced to use their website it's by choice where as on windows you had no option but to use IE even to get another browser. You could argue that the most popular car manufacturers, mobile phone manufacturers ect would have to sell competitors brands at their own outlets but no one is forcing you to purchase and use only their products.
When you search using IE you don't only get Microsoft products...
I hate this mentality of we need the government to protect us from these companies, we can protect ourselves.
The humanity!
You had to use IE to download Firefox(Chrome)!
Quick someone call the EU I feel violated to the core!
No one is forcing you to use Windows either you can even buy Chromebooks in BestBuy now and a Apple computer isn't hard to come by.
The EU needs the money for bailing out entire bankrupt countries, of course they're looking to collect money from huge companies that they can rort under auspicious terms. I fear the "law" will be applied heavily in light of these circumstances.
I say "law" because the rules here aren't laws in the traditional sense.
I say "law" because the rules here aren't laws in the traditional sense.
It's a fucking antitrust lawsuit settlement that Microsoft agreed to and then discarded for a while
They're not going to just let that slide, as they damn well shouldn't
And I don't know why Google keeps coming up in this thread, anyone who follows the news knows that the EU and American DoJ have both been coming down on Google hard for the past few years
Because google as search engine is chosen by people which type www.google.com in their browser.
google as main search engine in android thought will soon be probably countered same as IE.
So you think it's a coincidence that these fines are the largest anyone has ever seen? Sure, fine them but asking for 7bn is beyond satire.
But Microsoft employs 100,000 people, and their jobs are potentially affected by things like this.
UPDATE:
http://news.sky.com/story/1060795/microsoft-fined-over-rival-browser-choice
"Microsoft has been fined 561m euros (£484m) by the European Commission for breaking its promise to offer a choice of rival internet browsers.
Google, for example, is currently in discussions with the EU over how it ranks search engine results.
Microsoft's penalty is the latest in a string of punishments issued by the Commission against the US software giant.
In total, it has been fined 2.16bn euros (£1.87bn) for - among other things - not providing data at fair prices to rivals and for tying its media player to its operating system."
http://news.sky.com/story/1060795/microsoft-fined-over-rival-browser-choice
"Microsoft has been fined 561m euros (£484m) by the European Commission for breaking its promise to offer a choice of rival internet browsers.
Google, for example, is currently in discussions with the EU over how it ranks search engine results.
Microsoft's penalty is the latest in a string of punishments issued by the Commission against the US software giant.
In total, it has been fined 2.16bn euros (£1.87bn) for - among other things - not providing data at fair prices to rivals and for tying its media player to its operating system."
Windows is chosen by people that go to the store any buy a Windows PC or a Windows OS.
It is not the only alternative you can buy in the market.
So now we come to this, are we really going to start punishing companies for being successful?
Do we really need government bodies like the EU to protect us from our own supposed stupidity?
I'll put this toward you even without the EU Chrome and Firefox would be the dominate browsers simply because they are better than IE.
????
10% of last year's revenue is the maximum allowed by law and was reported as such
You do not see that monopolists essentially kill jobs by removing any competition.
Look up the definition of "monopoly"
A company does not have to own literally 100% of their market in order to qualify
I don't think that's the case - I just think people here are naturally wary of punitive measures that aren't consistently applied.
Microsoft used it's monopoly on the desktop to supposedly remove competition and gets punished.
Apple uses it's monopoly on the tablet to remove competition and... nothing.
Plus the browser choice was annoying and intrusive.
The thing is, these fines often take many years to reach a conclusion so there may very well be investigations of Apple/Google going on currently (as their dominance is only relatively recent) that we aren't aware of that we'll be reading about in 5 years+ time.
The tablet market is very new and the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slowly. This browser stuff is basically remnants of MS killing off competitors like Netscape years ago, it takes time for these things to shake out.
For now Apple has an effective monopoly in the largest segment of the tablet market but that could easily change in the next few years since there are several very well-funded and hungry competitors. Personally I would like to see antitrust regulators force things on Apple and MS such as a mandatory unlocking option for app side-loading in iOS/Windows RT but that isn't where they seem to want to focus their attention for the time being.
Yeah but IE as default internet application is not something you can choose buying operating system.
This is not only law of EU but also US law. If all existing ISP would be bought by Verison in US that ISP part of company would be divided into smaller parts and forced to compete with eachother.
Monopolism is worst thing that can happen to market and government is the one that always resolve those issues.
I know what a monopoly is.
So are we to punish them for being successful should we now have the EU dismantle Microsoft?
It wasn't long ago that Apple had a monopoly on the smartphone market, you know what happened?
Google made a cheaper product and pushed it hard and now owns that same market.
Monopolies are not immune to competition, the fact that IE is dwindling in marketshare shows it.
Government is not the only way to deal with a monopoly.
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