Microsoft Facing EU Antitrust Probe for Office
Here's another one for Microsoft to add to its seemingly never-ending list of EU antitrust probes: Word and Excel.
Bloomberg this week reports that Microsoft is in talks with European Union antitrust officials regarding Word and Excel in addition to the high profile case surrounding the Redmond company's Internet Explorer web browser. Bloomberg cites four sources, who all declined to be identified because the talks are confidential, as saying Microsoft is in preliminary talks to settle two additional probes before EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes leaves office. The sources went on to say that any agreement would have to resolve a case over IE as well as a separate investigation into word processing and spreadsheet software.
Microsoft has already racked over $2 billion in antitrust fines from the European Union and, while we've been hearing all about the IE probe for months now, details on the probe into the Office software are a little hazy. Bloomberg sources say that the EU is investigating complaints that Microsoft doesn’t provide formatting and other information to allow rival products to work with Microsoft Office software but neither Microsoft nor the EU would comment on the report.
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Interesting how open office works with office then.
And office opens generic plain or formatted text, or indeed html.
And there are loads of plugins, macros etc.
"seemingly endless"
What're you talking about? I count three. It's only seemingly endless because of your seemingly endless coverage.
It is definitely hard to get anything to work with the office suites document formats, I don't know how open office managed it.
"seemingly endless"What're you talking about? I count three. It's only seemingly endless because of your seemingly endless coverage.It is definitely hard to get anything to work with the office suites document formats, I don't know how open office managed it.
Do you suggest we don't produce coverage/updates on Microsoft's EU antitrust probes?
Open office dosen't open graphs and stuff in 07 MS office files but other than that I have no compatibility issues. In fact I'm impressed that it can open eg .docx files because as far as i know 03 MS office can't. I recently switched from 07 MS office to openoffice 'cause I changed my primary OS to Fedora.
Do you suggest we don't produce coverage/updates on Microsoft's EU antitrust probes?
No, I suggest that you don't make it sound like the EU is sending out more fines than they are. I'm happy to have the news, just less exaggeration would be nice.
2 questions :-
1) Why is it that (for example) a car manufacturer can use proprietory connectors for various components such as the oem radio used and yet if Microsoft use proprietory formats for their filing type the whole world 'gangs up' on them ?
2) This $2billion of fines , where does it go ? Does the alledged 'hard done by' consumer get to reap the benifits of Microsoft being fined ?
Let the EU do what it wants and Microsoft will simply start charging EU customers 40% more per copy.
Totally irrelevent, last I heard you could get adapters for after market radios. Plus as far as I know no car manufacturer has a monopoly although I might be wrong.
They already do dont they?
Poor bastards. That's Microsoft, but mostly us. -_-
Let the EU do what it wants and Microsoft will simply start charging EU customers 40% more per copy.
Don't they do that already?
So what are they trying to say then every thing has to be compatable with every thing else full stop ? Clearly imposable. Im begining to feel sorry for M$(not that much). The EU CC overstepped its authority and in my opinion its remit when it tried to tell M$ not only what it couldnt do,fair enough but then what it should do about it. Just plain stupid,
The car comparison is a fair one in my opinion. There are more things on a car that are exclusive to the makers than just electrical connecters.
A better example would be Mobile phone makers, sure there are noises about it know but why didnt the EU CC stop them making the chargers exclusive and expensive years ago ?
Mactronix