Competition Law
Microsoft settles 10 year competition fight with European
Commission...
Microsoft and the European commission have ended 10 years of
fighting with an agreement over Microsoft's alleged bundling of
its Internet Explorer browser software with its Windows operating
system. The Commission said that the bundling contravened European
competition law as it was an abuse of the software giant's
dominant position in the market for operating systems. Now,
Microsoft is willing to offer users a choice between different web
browsers when using Windows.
This was not the first fight between the two parties. In 2004,
following a long investigation, the Commission fined Microsoft
€497m for two competition law breaches. One was Microsoft
withholding vital information about the Windows operating system
from makers of server software, thereby gaining an unfair advantage
over them for its own server software products. The other was that
it unfairly bundled its Media
