The EU said yesterday it was dropping antitrust charges against Microsoft Corp after the company agreed to give Windows users a choice of up to 12 other Web browsers.
Under the terms of the deal with regulators, Microsoft will avoid further EU fines if it provides a pop-up screen that lets European users — from March — replace Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or add another browser such as Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s Chrome.
This will also allow computer manufacturers to ship PCs without Internet Explorer in Europe.
“Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use,” EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said.
“Such choice will not only serve to improve people’s experience of the internet now but also act as an incentive for web browser companies to innovate and offer people better browsers in the future,” Kroes said.
Microsoft has been warned though that it can be fined up to 10 percent of yearly global turnover without regulators having to prove their case if the company doesn’t stick to this commitment for the next five years.
The deal ends more than a decade of EU antitrust action against the world’s biggest software company that has already paid 1.7 billion euros (US$2.4 billion) in fines.
In January, the EU charged Microsoft with monopoly abuse for tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system software used on most desktop computers — this, they said, was an “artificial distribution advantage” that rivals didn’t have.
Meanwhile, Microsoft on Tuesday indefinitely suspended MSN Juku, its new microblogging service in China, after its Chinese vendor was caught lifting code from a rival startup, Plurk.
“We will be suspending access to the Juku beta indefinitely,” the Redmond, Washington-based software giant said in a statement.
“The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code they provided was indeed copied,” Microsoft said.
Plurk said as much as 80 percent of the basecode used in MSN Juku was “stolen directly from Plurk,” which claims to be the biggest microblogging service in Taiwan, 10 times bigger than Twitter.
Microsoft said the plagiarism of the code was “in clear violation” of the vendor’s contract with the MSN China joint venture, and equally inconsistent with Microsoft’s policies respecting intellectual property.
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