As regards interoperability, in its Microsoft judgment of 17 September 2007,
the Court of First Instance confirmed the principles that must be respected by
dominant companies as regards interoperability disclosures. In the complaint by
ECIS, Microsoft is alleged to have illegally refused to disclose
interoperability information across a broad range of products, including
information related to its Office suite, a number of its server products, and
also in relation to the so called .NET Framework. The Commission's
examination will therefore focus on all these areas, including the question
whether Microsoft's new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office,
is sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products.
As for the tying of separate software products, in its Microsoft judgment of
17 September 2007, the Court of First Instance confirmed the principles that
must be respected by dominant companies. In a complaint by Opera, a competing
browser vendor, Microsoft is alleged to have engaged in illegal tying of its
Internet Explorer product to its dominant Windows operating system. The
complaint alleges that there is ongoing competitive harm from Microsoft's
practices, in particular in view of new proprietary technologies that Microsoft
has allegedly introduced in its browser that would reduce compatibility with
open internet standards, and therefore hinder competition. In addition,
allegations of tying of other separate software products by Microsoft, including
desktop search and Windows Live have been brought to the Commission's attention.
The Commission's investigation will therefore focus on allegations that a range
of products have been unlawfully tied to sales of Microsoft's dominant operating
system.
It's official, hot off the presses (wasn't there a few minutes ago). We're now into a process where DG Competition will revisit its previous order requiring Microsoft to market two versions of Windows, one with Media Player and one without. DG Competition staff were considerably outraged that Microsoft took advantage of a bit of under-specification in the previous order and sold the two versions at the same price. That detail will not be neglected this time around. Moreover, given the ineffectiveness of the previous order in restoring competition among media players, don't be surprised if this results in an outright ban on bundling MSIE with Windows.
