SYS-CON MEDIA Authors: RealWire News Distribution, CloudCommons 2012, Kevin Benedict

Related Topics: .NET, SOA & WOA, AJAX & REA, Silverlight, Web 2.0, Security

.NET: Article

EC Admits to Being ‘Naïve’

Almunia still wants to use such deals to avoid protracted legal battles but figures enforcement has to be tightened up

By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
March 10, 2013 03:00 PM EDT
Reads:
 1,515

After fining Microsoft $733 million for unintentionally flouting an antitrust settlement with regulators, the European Commission took some of the blame.

Antitrust czar Joaquín Almunia said the EU had been "naïve" to let Microsoft monitor its own adherence to the 2009 deal that let it escape a fine in exchange for offering European Windows users a choice of browsers.

The non-appearance of the ballot screen was reported by Microsoft rivals and even that took a while.

Almunia still wants to use such deals to avoid protracted legal battles but figures enforcement has to be tightened up and that the EC will be more inclined to use trustees. Whether that will happen now in Microsoft's case is unclear.

The substantial fine levied on Microsoft is supposed to serve as a warning to others.

Published March 10, 2013 – Reads 1,515
Copyright © 2013 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara

Comments (0)

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.