The European competition commissioner Mario Monti announced on
Friday that he is considering merging two current enquiries into
Microsoft and its alleged abuse of its dominant position in the
operating system market. A hearing will be fixed for the present
investigations at which Microsoft will make its defences.
The first enquiry is looking at allegations that Microsoft is
using its dominant position in the PC operating system market to
gain dominance of the server market; the other is based on a
complaint lodged by Sun Microsystems that Microsoft is competing
unfairly by refusing to give Sun interoperability information for
Windows 2000.
Microsoft submitted to the Commission 9,000 pages of evidence on
the cases last November. Mr Monti said he is now close to
completing his evaluation of it, adding, “At this stage, in spite
of Microsoft’s claim that what they do is to the benefit of
consumers and innovation, I am not sure that their concept of
interoperability and their market behaviour ensure a competitive
scenario.”
