The European Commission's impatience follows its March 2004
finding that Microsoft broke competition law by leveraging its near
monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets
for work group server operating systems and for media players.
The Commission imposed a fine, ordered Microsoft to offer an
alternative stripped-down version of Windows, and ordered the firm
to publish some of its interfaces, so that competitors could make
their products interoperable with Windows.
Microsoft has paid the fine and produced the alternative Windows
version, but has been slow to produce what the Commission sees as
adequate interoperability information.
In December, the European Commission finally set Microsoft a
deadline of 25th January by which to supply "adequate
information about its server programs". Failure to do this, said
the Commission, would result in daily fines of $2
million, backdated to the original deadline of
15th December.
Over the last few weeks, Microsoft has been calling for more
time in which to respond to the Commission’s concerns over the
information already supplied. As a result, the Commission
yesterday agreed to extend the deadline to 15th
February.
Meantime, Microsoft has faced criticism from the US
administration, over delays in meeting the requirements of its 2002
antitrust settlement.
Originally brought by the Department of Justice and 20 states,
the US antitrust action was largely settled in 2002 when Microsoft,
the Justice Department and several states signed a
judicially-approved settlement.
As part of the settlement, Microsoft is monitored for compliance
with the agreement, and six-monthly joint status reports are
presented to District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly for her
consideration.
The last of these highlighted problems faced by Microsoft in
implementing a protocol analyser project. The project, code-named
“Troika”, is intended to improve the accuracy of technical
documentation provided to licensees under the settlement.
To monitor the progress of the implementation, it was proposed
that monthly reports on this specific point would be filed with the
court. The first of these was published on 17th January,
revealing that, according to US prosecutors, “Since approximately
mid-November, Microsoft has fallen significantly behind in
responding to technical documentation issues submitted by the
[Technical Committee]”.
Prosecutors called for a dramatic increase in resources
in order to bring the process back on track.
