Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes sent a letter to the software maker last week outlining two main concerns regarding Vista and its conformity with the Commission's March 2004 decision, according to a statement from the Commission on Wednesday.
One concern centred on the possibility that Vista would include features in its products that are already available separately from Microsoft and other companies, such as Internet search, digital rights management and software to create fixed document formats like PDF.
The other concern focused on whether Microsoft would fail to disclose all necessary technical information to third parties to make Vista interoperable with competing products.
The European Commission will begin a two-day hearing on Thursday on allegations that Microsoft failed to comply with its March 2004 ruling. The issue of having Microsoft's OS interoperable with competitors' products is also at the heart of that ruling, and the Commission will decide whether the software giant should be subject to a fine of up to 2 million euros a day.
While the Commission sent the Vista letter as a means to clarify its concerns, the European antitrust regulators have not formally launched an investigation.
Microsoft, meanwhile, contends it is working hard to be inclusive with Vista.
"Keeping the industry and regulators informed of our product development plans has been, and will remain, a priority," Microsoft said in a statement on Wednesday, noting it has not yet received the Commission's letter. "We have worked hard to include partners and competitors in our planning, so they can build products and services that work with Windows Vista."
Other industry players, however, have raised objections to the lack of interoperability of Microsoft's older OS with their products.
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) will submit evidence at the hearing this week, as an interested party. The ECIS includes Sun Microsystems, RealNetworks, IBM, Oracle, Corel, Nokia, Red Hat, Opera and Linspire.
The "industry wants nothing more than to achieve interoperability as soon as possible to restore consumer choice and competition on the merits in the work group server market," Simon Awde, ECIS chairman, said in a statement. "Two years after the Commission decision, we are still not there."
This legal crud is just going to hurt consumers in the end. Competition this, competition that. Really, if a company manages itself right and releases a good enough product that people will want it then they will make money. Also I can use other company's product and set them as the default program on Windows XP. So what's the big deal Microsoft bundles it's popular softwares like Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and soon it's anti-spyware software in Windows Vista. Like Windows XP users can chose to use other software not from Microsoft if the user desires to. It's not like Microsoft is restricting user to download or installing other company's web browsers, media players, anti-spy, internet security suites, etc software into it's Windows operating system. The Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd has said "We are concerned about the possibility that the next Vista operating system will include various elements which are currently available separately from Microsoft or other companies," Well Microsoft allows users to use other company's softwares and set them as the default program in it's operating system. So European antitrust regulators concerns and worries me NOT Microsoft.