Bill Gates having to cough up some serious dough......

Heh! Heh! Ha! Ha! Microsoft has thrown in the towel and admitted defeat to the European Commission. This landmark anti-trust ruling has been rumbling on for 3 years and started as a rearguard action against a decision to pay £347million fine (small change for old charity loving Bill G.).

This will open up the global IT market to greater consumer choice. Anti-trust laws are better operated in Europe and ironically, the USA. It means a company isn’t allowed to have monopolies. Unlike in the UK where a New Labour and/or Tory politician would prefer to stick pins in their eyes than reign in the capitalists. It is better to kow-tow to the demands of capitalism…

The reason Microsoft got the lion share of the market was mainly due to sharp practice. They understood that in order for PCs to communicate they would need an operating system. As long as your ‘puter is Windows compatible then it is all systems go. Microsoft inevitably made it difficult for other opening systems like Linux as everything is predicated towards Windows. Barriers are put up and other companies are pushed out of the market.

Microsoft gambled big and lost financially (they may still incur further fines). They breached the “abuse of a dominant position” rule in European law (yeah, I know, it sounds kinky…so no snickering). There isn’t a problem legally having a dominant position in the market but using it to keep out competitors is…

Microsoft probably caved in ‘cos the European Commission could have argued that they would push Linux and Windows would have been screwed. And they also hit Microsoft with a massive fine. One of the reasons why Rupert Murdoch is hostile to the European markets is that his dominance would be curtailed unlike his free reign in Britain.

This is a victory as to a certain extent capitalism has reigned in the worse excesses. Classical neo-liberalism wouldn’t have had any problem with the conduct of Microsoft but there is that contradiction inherent in neo-liberal economics that large dominant companies start to act like…the state…

More power to Linux……………