Whenever a new story about Microsoft and the EU happens to be doing the rounds, I always make a point of visiting DailyTech. It is easily the worst of the major technology news sites, but nothing brings it to life like a good story about those sissy socialists in the EU fining a good ol’ hard working ‘merican company. You rarely need to read more than a few comments before the jingoistic wannabes chime in with their usual drivel about how Microsoft should pull out of Europe, and that the U.S. should impose sanctions and/or nuke Brussels. Something tells me MSFT stockholders are rather glad these people aren’t in charge.

However, as in almost any conflict, it is important to remember that just because one side is blatantly wrong, one cannot always assume that their opponents must be right. Of course, the half baked opinions of these pitiful plebs are hardly worth wasting bandwidth on, but is Microsoft really receiving fair treatment from the EU?

The new €899m ($1.35bn) fine has come about as a result of Microsoft’s failure to comply with an original 2004 anti-trust ruling, where the EU determined that MS were abusing their monopoly in the desktop Operating System market to edge out rival back-end server software vendors and competing media players. Now, the EU’s complaint about server-side interoperability may well be a valid one, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the media player issue is a complete red herring. If you haven’t kept up with this story, the original ruling led to Microsoft’s European-only release of the ‘N’ editions of Windows XP, which, unlike the standard versions (which were still available for sale), were not bundled with Windows Media Player - essentially a re-run of the old Internet Explorer vs Netscape thing.

The problem with this approach is that Microsoft are hardly the only Operating System vendor to bundle a media player with their product. Apple have iTunes, and while Linux distributions typically offer a choice of playback software, there is normally one that is installed by default (e.g. Totem on GNOME based systems). In other words, the EU seem to think that practices which are acceptable for smaller companies become anti-competitive when they are employed by a company that already has a monopoly, when they should be concentrating on practices that are only possible because of that monopoly.

Let me give you an example:

In my opinion, Microsoft’s most anti-competitive practice by far is their habit of applying pressure to the major PC manufacturers so as to make it next to impossible to buy a computer ‘off the shelf’ that does not come with Windows preloaded (the so-called ‘Microsoft Tax’). I’m not necessarily suggesting that suppliers should offer a choice of Operating System - that would be an understandable support nightmare. But, if the EU seriously wants to put a dent in the Windows monopoly, they could do far worse than to pass legislation requiring Dell and friends to offer ‘naked’ PCs that, crucially, carry an appropriately lower price tag. Should this ever look like a serious possibility, Microsoft will, of course, play the ‘piracy card’, and assert that every PC sold without an OS will have a pirated copy of Windows installed on it, and, as our friends on DailyTech would tell us, software piracy funds terrorism and drug smuggling, but that’s another story entirely.