Microsoft fined $731m by European Commission over web browser choice

I think more companies should be fined like this, as a percentage of their anual revenue. Except that I would further increase the percentage - up to 50% or even 100%.<p>It's very simple: citizens go to jail, companies can't; so we have to make them pay, a lot. When fines are a fixed amount, the corporations have to simply earn more by committing the crime than they would have to pay if caught; banks are very adept at playing this game.

This fine would only make sense if Microsoft <i>prevented</i> users from installing a different browser.<p>Consider an analogy: let's say there's a power company who runs a monopoly on generating electricity. They also provide natural gas services to their customers. There is, however, a bunch of other smaller natural gas companies just a phone call away that people can buy natural gas from; all you have to do is call them and have a technician come and flip a switch in your home. Is it really harmful to the consumer if the power company with the dominant market position doesn't give their customers the phone numbers of the companies competing with its natural gas division? No.

It's completely crazy.<p>We've accepted browsers are part of the OS for a long time, what's next fining Apple for not promoting Mozilla or Chrome on iOS?

It's only a small percentage of the taxes that Microsoft has dodged, er, "structured away". Microsoft can pay the fine using their cash that's stranded overseas without having to repatriate it back to the US and pay taxes on it.

Here is the European Commission's press release about the decision: <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-196_en.htm" rel="nofollow">http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-196_en.htm</a>

Whilst it is Microsoft with bags of money and all that, I don't really see how such a huge fine (even for M$) is warranted.<p>Yes, they stopped offering the browser choice, but at what point did someone from EU-HQ contact MS-HQ and tell them they'll be fined if they don't put it back in? Surely it would only take a few weeks at the most to actually re-instate the "feature" once they were threatened with a huge fine.<p>It might have been better for Microsoft to have actually been forced to give money to the other browsers to promote their products, or alternatively, just bundle Firefox/Chrome with Windows and be done with it.

This thread seems to be heavily flagged, but nobody mentions in their comment that it's irrelevant or that they've downvoted or flagged it. Any of the flaggers would care to share their reasons?

That's about $50 per user believed to have been affected by the error.

I think the EU should stop collecting taxes and get American tech giants to fund the public service with spurious fines.

EU competition law is a completely different beast from US antitrust law, and whilst I disagree with both forms, the EU definitely suffers from more of a Tall Poppy Syndrome: if you're a market leader with a disproportionate share of the market, it's almost assumed that you're acting in bad faith, and it's up to you to prove you're promoting 'fairness' and 'competition'.<p>If anything is 'anti-competitive' it's rulings like these, which punish people for producing quality software and increase the uncertainty of doing business in the EU.<p>There's a good comparison of the two systems over here: <a href="http://www.iie.com/publications/chapters_preview/56/10ie1664.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.iie.com/publications/chapters_preview/56/10ie1664...</a>

What does this mean for ChromeOS or Firefox OS? I'm seriously curious how the legal system considers them in light of this and why MS hasn't mentioned them (to my knowledge) in their defence.

I'm sorry but what about the ipod, iPad, iPhone.... Can't remember them giving me the choice of where I want to buy media. This must be a joke?

This still seems rather unfair, why are other proprietary operating systems <i>not</i> obliged to incorporate a similar feature? It's Microsoft own operating system and they should be allowed to incorporate whatever piece of software they'd like, albeit to a reasonable extent.<p>On the other hand, I do find it weird there are no repercussions like this for Windows' new secure boot "feature".

In my opinion this sheds some light on Sinofsky's departure. That's quite a fuck-up and it happened on his watch.

Microsoft is stupid for making this mistake but the fine is complete BS in the first place. I think it would make more since to fine them over search engine options since that's where the money is actually made. If someone can explain how money is made off the browser alone then please enlighten me.

Microsoft will probably counter-fine by raising its prices by 1€ in EU. Europe will happily pay for it.

Why don't they start fining car manufacturers for not providing customers with a choice of seats made by other manufactures? Antitrust law in the EU is a load of bs, coming from someone who uninstalls IE first thing after installing Windows.

For now, it´s "just" browser applications.

Another trip to the Microsoft piggybank.

I wonder what they do with this money actually. Same as is done with tax money?

What motivation have Microsoft got to pay this?