Not to sound like a Microsoft slave or anything but really what is wrong in the position Microsoft is in? How are they going against competition? By including somethings that should be included in their own product which is an OS and has to come with something otherwise it would seem pretty bare bone.

If we look at the imac osx, that come with safari and quicktime but you can still install something else on there as well just like in windows so really what is the big deal.

What's the big deal again? Including IE/WMP kills competition?

I'm using firefox/mpc with my Win XP install, so, I'm not exactly sure what the big deal is.

Fining a monopoly is an exercise in futility. In 2.5 years, retails & OEM sales of XP reached 210 million units. That doesn't include their licensing agreements. To make up for the fine, all MS has to do is charge a marginal increase, and because it's a monopoly, who's really going to go to an alternative for at little as $5?

As for those comparing Windows/IE/WMP to MacOSX/Safari/QT, you have to do more reading. Firstly, MS/Windows has been declared as having monopolistic market position. As such, it is bound by additional laws of governance, to ensure that it doesn't abuse that position. Secondly, the issue of concern here is not about them including the software with the OS, it's about the software being tied to the OS in such a way that the OS is irrevocably bound to that extra software, and that competing software is not able achieve this.

One small example would be Windows Explorer, and the ability to type URLs into the Address bar to have web pages rendered there. This feature has nothing to do with the OS, but is something extra added on. However, no other web browser (or HTML rendering engine at a more basic level) is able to be substituted into here because that feature is tied directly to MSs HTML rendered, and there exists no APIs (at least documented ones) which other vendors can use. That's where it's abuse of it's market position comes into play.

And as a counter-point, I'll be happy to add that Apple itself is treading on thin-ice these days with it's iPod/iTunes combination. It might be 10 years down the road before we see anything from it, but I don't believe that it shouldn't be under a little scrutiny from the DoJ / EU at this point.

You must be used to bending over when a company decides to abuse you and you have no other choice around.

Aren't you the Apple user? And how much choice are they given their users with their own proprietary hardware and software offerings?

Six in one, half a dozen in the other, so lose your artificially inflated sense of enlightenment.

When M$ includes a media player in their OS, it's "illegal anti-competitive" behavior; when Apple includes a media player in their OS, it's "innovation." Did the court not notice that no one--not even the Tier One OEMs--was buying the version of Windows that didn't come with a media player?

Is it really any wonder why there are no serious software companies in the EU that compete with M$? Only in Europe would you have a paid, bureaucratic position called the Competition Commissioner...

comments without iframe ??

excessively regulatory.

ie's explosively bad integration into windows os's, which in turn led to security problems we're still dealing with today ==> a case where a functionally monopolistic position was obviously exploited by microsoft to push a competing company from the marketplace.

but wmp's implementation... yeah, not so much. for all its many, many faults, this punitive measure against ms is rather bogus.

Pocket change for MS.. that should have been more like : 20 billion. Something that would REALLY make them think twice..

Adi