EC: Microsoft likely to face big fines

Europe's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, has warned that Microsoft is talking itself into a large fine.

Kroes was unhappy that Microsoft has accused the European Commission of colluding with its rivals, during the on-running antitrust trial.

"If we pursue the line we are following now, there will be fines and they won't be small fines," said Kroes on Thursday, according to the Financial Times.

On Thursday, Microsoft said the EC had held back documents that the software giant needs in order to defend itself against a possible antitrust fine of up to 2 million euros a day.

Microsoft also said that the EC had encouraged other companies to have "extensive, unsupervised and undocumented contact" with the Dr Neil Barratt. Barratt is a UK computer expert who was appointed as a trustee to monitor Microsoft's compliance with the EC antitrust ruling of 2004.

"The Commission also took it upon itself to facilitate secret meetings between the Trustee and another of Microsoft's adversaries... The purpose of the meetings was to allow [the adversary's] engineers to work together with the Trustee on identifying "any continuing gaps, which would allow the Trustee to demand supplementary information from Microsoft," claimed Microsoft.

Microsoft published its latest claims on its Web site.

ZDNet UK's Graeme Wearden reported from London. For more coverage from ZDNet UK, click here.

Advertisement

Talkback 0 comments

Latest Videos

Sponsored content

Power Centre - Content from our premier sponsors

Blogs

  • David Braue Forget the NBN, 100Mbps is already here
    Telstra and TransACT will shortly begin offering 100Mbps broadband to many customers. By moving early, the companies have not only raised the bar for Australia's broadband services, but thrown down a challenge to a government that now faces increased pressure to deliver the NBN as promised.
  • Array IT: Govt's cost-cutting bitch
    The government needs to stop looking at IT as a necessary evil or the place to remove costs when the Treasurer comes calling.
  • Array Can complaints on mobile content be cut?
    On 1 July this year the new Mobile Premium Services Code was introduced. It sounds like it's had a good impact, but is it enough?
  • More blogs »

Tags

Back to top

Featured