Microsoft get spanked

[swift240]

So the all mighty Microsoft got a spanking did they.
Its a bout time them B*****S got done.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6998272.stm




But lets face it that wont stop them.

[motrucker]

There was a similar ruling here in the States back when Clinton was President. Of course M$ appealed, but we never heard what happened. Did the Bush administration just brush it under the carpet??

[motorollin]

£343m is nothing to MS. Lets hope the bad publicity costs them more.

--
moto

[shIva]

£343m is nothing to MS.

£343m is £343m to MS. It will hurt.

[Terse]

It will not hurt MS, it will hurt the slightly smaller multinational companies that are next on the hit list.  MS having lost the ruling will be stronger to investors who will be bolstered by the knowledge that MS won't be sued again.

[Ilwrath]

£343m is £343m to MS. It will hurt.

They're Microsoft.  They found more than that in spare change that fell out of the chair Steve Ballmer threw.

[ArchM]

"It provides legal certainty now as to what you can and you can't do in relation to information you have to make available to companies who compete in your environment to enable them to be a viable competitor," he added.

That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.  Now, I know I'm going to get a scolding for this, but why should MS have to give it's competitors information about it's product so that they can better compete?  
If MS puts the money and the manpower into developing something, then why should somebody that didn't reap any benefits from it?

[motorollin]

ArchM wrote:
why should MS have to give it's competitors information about it's product so that they can better compete?

Because competition is desirable in a free market, and it is very difficult to compete with a company like MS.

--
moto

[amigakid]

In a free Market??? Nothing is free and I hate to agree but if MS doesn't want to share its code or what ever then they have the right not to.  Give me a breakits like telling Apple they have to open source OSX.  Crushing competitors is one thing but making them open source programs is another.

[motorollin]

amigakid wrote:
In a free Market??? Nothing is free

Free Market

amigakid wrote:
and I hate to agree but if MS doesn't want to share its code or what ever then they have the right not to.

Apparently not.

--
moto

[amigadave]

ArchM wrote:
"It provides legal certainty now as to what you can and you can't do in relation to information you have to make available to companies who compete in your environment to enable them to be a viable competitor," he added.

That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.  Now, I know I'm going to get a scolding for this, but why should MS have to give it's competitors information about it's product so that they can better compete?  
If MS puts the money and the manpower into developing something, then why should somebody that didn't reap any benefits from it?

Because MS has used illegal business practices to crush competitors and gain the amount of market dominance where it is impossible to compete any longer.  So now to remedy the situation, MS must provide SOME of their code that will allow other companies to develop programs that can compete with PARTS of the MS monopoly.

It is a shame that the proper remedy was not imposed by the U.S. legal system, which should have found MS guilty of the illegal business practices that allowed them to become the monopoly that they now are, and then they should have broken MS up into separate parts, just like they did to AT&T (the phone company) many years ago.  MS should have been taken DOWN!!!

[Eclipse]

Nearly all Apple softaware like Itunes and quicktime will work on windows.
Microsoft deliberately made WMP to only work on Windows.
That's what the argument is.

[MarkTime]

That's £343m in hard currency.  That will hurt microsoft, who is more used to paying in the U.S. Dollar, which is ironically 'monopoly' money in more ways than one, at this point in time.

[Terse]

MarkTime wrote:
That's £343m in hard currency.  That will hurt microsoft, who is more used to paying in the U.S. Dollar, which is ironically 'monopoly' money in more ways than one, at this point in time.

Wrong.  Re-read:
It will not hurt MS, it will hurt the slightly smaller multinational companies that are next on the hit list. MS having lost the ruling will be stronger to investors who will be bolstered by the knowledge that MS won't be sued again on this issue.

Sucks dosen't it?