Playing to the card the European Commission has dealt it Symantec has been accusing Microsoft to the press - without suing or filing a formal complaint but within hearing of the regulators - of abusing its monopoly by locking it out of Vista and not giving it the information it needs to build compatible products.

The EC, of course, has already warned Microsoft about bundling its own security upgrades in Vista and foreclosing the market to competitors.

Such is the state of things between Microsoft and the regulators that Vista might not ship on time (ha!) or might not ship in Europe and if it does the EC will probably torpedo it. Symantec is now exploiting that dust-up.

It says it's trying to pressure Microsoft into giving it the APIs so it can communicate with Vista's Defender anti-spam/anti-spyware filter and security dashboard. If it doesn't, well, it will talk to the EC.

Microsoft maintains that the new Vista release candidate will let security houses turn off Defender and substitute their own widgetry, a new feature it, um, forgot to tell anybody existed. It also claims that the APIs have been available to Symantec since, um, Monday. Symantec says it ain't and it's supposed to ship a Vista-compatible version of the Norton anti-virus to OEMs in October.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal editorial page took the EC to task Monday for being pro-competitors and anti-competition and anti-innovation and observed that Adobe, another Vista protestor, "is asking the EU to protect its total monopoly in the electronic document market by acting against Microsoft's near-monopoly in the operating systems market."

--Copyright Client/Server News