http://arstechnica.com/…

If there’s a sense of déjà vu permeating a rather massive corporate campus in Redmond, Washington right now, it wouldn’t be surprising. The European Commission, which regulates competition for the European Union, today announced a brand new antitrust investigation against Microsoft.

Like the investigation that resulted in a €497 million fine in 2004, the new investigation will look at whether Microsoft abused its dominant market position to give some of its own products an unfair advantage. This time around, the EC will be proceeding on two separate fronts.

The first area of investigation will concern the interoperability of some of Microsoft’s products, including Office 2007, the .NET Framework, and some of Microsoft’s server products. The investigation stems from a complaint filed by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, which alleges that the new Office Open XML does not play nice with competing products.

The EC will also fully investigate a complaint filed late last year by Norwegian browser maker Opera. In it, Opera accused Microsoft of illegally tying Internet Explorer to Windows operating systems and not following “fundamental and open” standards for how web browsers render pages. Opera wants the EC to force Microsoft to begin offering versions of Windows without IE installed and to make the browser more standards-compliant.

Sad. Opera can’t compete with Microsoft so they try to use the government to hurt their competitors. I give them props as a software development firm but their legal department appears to be filled with sore losers.

Microsoft is not a monopoly. They have a huge market share because they where in the right places at the right times with the right software. You want to out do them you’re going to need to do more than provide a decent browser for free. There’s a decent amount of competition in that game. Why not focus on the mobile market and stop whining.

As for Office… if you don’t like its interoperability or lack thereof than don’t use it. Problem solved. Latex, RTF, etc are supported by plenty of apps.

http://arstechnica.com/…

California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia have moved (PDF) to extend their antitrust judgment against Microsoft until November 12, 2012. This decree is a modification of last month’s request to a judge that the judgment be extended by five years. The current antitrust decree is scheduled to expire in November of this year.

Firstly, they claim that there have been “continuing problems” with Microsoft’s efforts to document its server communications protocols.

Secondly, the report laments the state of OEM web browser bundling, saying that “no major OEM currently distributes a browser other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE).”

I’m no fan of Microsoft but it’s laughable to think people actually consider them a monopoly. Sure they own lots of stuff and a whole lot of hardware run their software… but there are dozens of alternatives both for sale in the traditional sense but also free and open source projects. It’s really amazing all this has gone on for so long.

And why aren’t these states going after MS, Sony and Nintendo for having closed platforms? Shouldn’t my 360 game be able to work on my Wii?