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ROFL

pico_D 6th Mar 2009

So having to pay for a Windows licence on a machine I had no intention of running Windows on wasn't abuse of a monopoly position?

The subsequent fines were made at Microsoft's request - aka they thought the EU would roll over and let its tummy be tickled like the US did, so they were surprised when they actually had to pay and had to pay additional fines for non-compliance with the court decisions within the allowed number of years.

The original case was needed, although the Media Player and Internet Explorer sides of it are a bit bogus and detract from what the main goals were, as they are the two pieces of the action (and ongoing complaints from Opera) that Otto Normalverbrauche (Joe Bloggs, Joe the Plumber) can understand - get into the intricacies of MS's legal and advertising departments misdeeds in the 80s and 90s and they either stare blankly or change the channel, WMP and IE is something they can understand, leads to sensational headlines and better hit rates, but hides what the real goals were...

It is time the commission was disbanded, they have done their work and MS complied, eventually.

The Opera red-herring is a few years too late, while IE has lost nearly 40% market share to other browsers, I can't see how Opera can claim that the consumer is stiffled for choice... But that's another story.