The European Union is about to become approximately $357 million USD richer. In a ruling made early on Wednesday morning, a judge found Microsoft to still be out of compliance with its 2004 anti-trust ruling.
For those who forget (or just didn't care enough at the time to read about) the ruling had found that Microsoft was behaving like a monopoly with its network server connectivity in Windows software. At that time, Microsoft was ordered to pay 497 million Euros, and was given until December of 2005 to clean up its act and get proper information to competing server software makers.
The failure to do so has now resulted in a fine of 1.5 million Euros for each of another 187 days of non-compliance. Microsoft called the fine "unjustified," and will likely appeal it. In the meantime, the company has until July 31 to get into compliance, or a heftier 3m Euros per day fine will apply. At the time of the fine, MS had over 300 employees working solely on bringing it into compliance with the EU ruling, a figure that one could guess will only go up from here.
Certainly, $357M USD is a lot of money. But how much is the public losing by MS not helping other server software writers connect to the most popular OS in the world? Leave us your ideas on the matter in our forums.
For those who forget (or just didn't care enough at the time to read about) the ruling had found that Microsoft was behaving like a monopoly with its network server connectivity in Windows software. At that time, Microsoft was ordered to pay 497 million Euros, and was given until December of 2005 to clean up its act and get proper information to competing server software makers.
The failure to do so has now resulted in a fine of 1.5 million Euros for each of another 187 days of non-compliance. Microsoft called the fine "unjustified," and will likely appeal it. In the meantime, the company has until July 31 to get into compliance, or a heftier 3m Euros per day fine will apply. At the time of the fine, MS had over 300 employees working solely on bringing it into compliance with the EU ruling, a figure that one could guess will only go up from here.
Certainly, $357M USD is a lot of money. But how much is the public losing by MS not helping other server software writers connect to the most popular OS in the world? Leave us your ideas on the matter in our forums.
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