Comment Articles

EU probe

Guy Kewney AnchorDesk

Published: 31 Aug 2001 15:28 BST

There is no doubt whatsoever that Microsoft will win its battle, one way or the other, against the European Commission on monopolies. That doesn't mean that the Commission hasn't got a case, or that monopolies are not really all that bad. It means that almost certainly, if the EU takes effective action, Microsoft will get extra "compensatory" sponsorship from American Government sources. What the Commission is asking isn't all that fierce. Microsoft (it says, correctly) dominates several IT segments.

In those segments you either have to exist with Microsoft, or die. For example, as the Commission reports, "to enable alternative server software to interoperate in the prevailing Windows environment, technical interface information must be known." That's pretty obvious. If you are producing a server, or an application that needs you to enhance existing server software, and it has to talk to your customers' machines, then you need to be able to speak the same language as your customers do.

Microsoft has the information you need. As the dominant supplier of server software, it's in an enviable position. It can say to your own customer: "We're afraid you have an uncomfortable choice: you can buy our software, or you can buy software from someone else; and their software won't work with ours. Sorry!" In the free market economy, there is absolutely no way around that. It's the behaviour of a playground bully: "give me all your pocket money, or I'll hit you."

It's bad enough, or it would be bad enough, if Microsoft was prepared to provide this technical information at exorbitant rates; but, says the Commission, that's not the case. It believes Microsoft "may have withheld from vendors of alternative server software, key information that they need to enable their products to talk to Microsoft's dominant PC and server software products." And the EU commission says: "Microsoft may have done this through a combination - refusing to reveal the relevant technical information, and by engaging in a policy of discriminatory and selective disclosure on the basis of a 'friend-enemy' scheme."