EC, DOJ, NY state pressure Microsoft to turn over interoperability docs

Brussels (Belgium) - The Statement of Objections puts in writing the legislative body’s grievances concerning what it characterizes as Microsoft’s failure to comply with a March 2004 antitrust ruling, compelling the company to explain in writing how operating system vendors may be able to produce tools - and, conceivably, other operating systems - that are interoperable with Windows. Microsoft has, it was confirmed, turned over documentation of some form to the EC, which members concluded was illegible or meaningless.

European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes, in a late 2005 visit by US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales. (Courtesy EUROPA)

Perhaps sensing a change in the political winds, as Reuters is also reporting, the US Attorney-General’s office appears to be joining European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes, in expressing discomfort at the apparent rate in which Microsoft is turning over documentation to the Department of Justice, in compliance with their antitrust settlement of 2002.

The DOJ’s disgruntlement comes in the wake of an official complaint filed with the Department yesterday by New York State Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer, complaining that documentation about a key Microsoft project, about which the company was to report to the DOJ and state attorneys-general on a regular basis, no longer meets the so-called "Service-Level Guidelines" (SLG) agreed upon during the 2002 settlement, for timeliness and full disclosure.

"While Microsoft’s January 17 report describes various efforts that Microsoft is making to improve the speed with which it replies to technical documentation issues submitted by the TC," the New York Attorney-General’s statement reads, "Microsoft has not detailed the seriousness of the current situation...This reflects a substantial change from before the last Joint Status Report, when Microsoft was meeting the SLGs 100% of the time. Since approximately mid-November, Microsoft has fallen significantly behind in responding to technical documentation issues submitted by the TC."

The report, called the "Plaintiffs’ Response," refers specifically to a "parser development project" that Microsoft is currently pursuing, in co-operation with the company’s labs in India. It tells the story of one test phase of the project, during which a team sent to India from Microsoft headquarters had the difficult duty of informing the India labs that information it had given India regarding its own test laboratory environment - evidently necessary to make the intercontinental nature of the test work - was inaccurate. Rather than postpone the test’s deadline, however, certain parameters of the India experiment were adjusted, while the accuracy level of the test was adjusted downward to account for possible inaccuracies. As a result, the Plaintiffs’ Response argues, the states know less about what it is Microsoft is trying to test, than they might have known otherwise.

The states’ and federal government’s interest in the India labs test may derive from the parser project being an offshoot of Microsoft’s Web browser development, which was a central focus of the US antitrust settlement. But states, including New York, have issued general complaints such as this in the past ; this appears to be the first in some time in which the DOJ is issuing at least the faint resemblance of a sympathetic response.