Microsoft and the EU, redux
Just in case you were wondering where I come down on the Microsoft issue.
As much as I think the EU are a bunch of sniveling snipes, Microsoft should expect that if they want to do business in Europe, they have to play by Eurpoe’s rules. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
I don’t think that software bundling in and of itself is harmful to competition, but exclusive contracts with hardware vendors, the repeated IP thefts, the proprietary non-standard implementations of standards – those ARE harmful.
The only explanation for why the US government went after MS for Internet Explorer, and not for the hundreds of technologies they “stole” (actually, they would get their engineers to look at stuff that other people developed, and either steal it outright, or clone it and give it away, sucking the value out of the original inventor’s hands) is that the government wanted a case where they could show that they were “doing something, damnit!”, but in actuality all they were doing was getting Microsoft to pay protection money to both political parties.
Now that it looks like MS is buying politicians like everyone else, people are surprised?