EC launches new investigations into Microsoft dominance

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 15 January 2008 01:52

IT Industry - Strategy

The European Commission has initiated two new antitrust investigations against Microsoft for alleged abuse of a dominant market position one of which follows a complaint by Opera over non-standard features of Microsoft's Explorer browser. The other concerns interoperability. In its judgement against Microsoft in September 2007, the European Court of First Instance confirmed the principles that must be respected by dominant companies as regards interoperability disclosures. Now the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) alleges that Microsoft has failed to respect these principles by refusing 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.NET Framework.

The Commission says it will examine 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. The move comes amid calls for Microsoft to make its old file formats public to ensure continued access from software designed to support the emerging open document format.

Meanwhile, Opera has accused Microsoft of illegally tying 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 reduce its compatibility with open Internet standards, and therefore hinder competition.

The Commission says that other allegations of separate software products being tied together by Microsoft, including desktop search and Windows Live have been brought to its attention.