European Commission gets new complaints on Vista

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

A group of Microsoft’s rivals has filed a complaint against the
Seattle-based company for using its new product Vista, under release these
days, to unfairly continue and even strengthen its dominant position on the
market.

The group including IBM, Nokia, RealNetworks, Sun Microsystems, Adobe,
Corel, Opera, Oracle, Red Hat and Linspire complained to the European
Commission saying that the computer language used in the Vista software,
called XAML, was “positioned to replace HTML,” the standard language used to
publish documents on the Internet. XAML would be dependent on Microsoft
Windows thus discriminating against other systems like Linux. The group also
stated that OOXML, a platform file format that governs the way in which
files are stored and formatted, was designed to run only in the Microsoft
Office software.

Simon Awde, chairman of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems
(ECIS) stated that: “Microsoft has clearly chosen to ignore the fundamental
principles of the Commission’s March 2004 decision”. The respective decision
was saying that Microsoft had used its market dominant position to force out
RealNetworks and other makers of audio and video streaming software, and
that Microsoft desktop Windows system had on purpose been designed to be
incompatible with other software.

ECIS also stated that “Vista is the first step of Microsoft’s strategy to
extend its market dominance to the Internet” and “The end result will be the
continued absence of any real consumer choice, years of waiting for
Microsoft to improve – or even debug – its monopoly products and of course
high prices”.

On the other hand, Linux considers that Vista could be a good opportunity
for promoting its own operating system, as the new characteristics and the
slightly different feel and look of the software may create disruptions in
the working place when moving from an older Microsoft version to Vista.

While Microsoft, which has challenged the 2004 decision and waits for a
decision by the EU’s Court of First Instance, has made no comment on the new
accusations, a spokesman for the European Commission stated that the
complaint made by the competitors’ group was being examined.

Rivals attack Vista as illegal under EU rules (26.01.2007)
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-6153671.html

Rivals accuse Microsoft before Vista’s introduction (26.01.2007)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/26/business/vista.php

Rivals accuse Microsoft of bullying tactics (29.01.2007)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39285666,00.htm

EDRI-gram – Microsoft Vista gets criticism before its launching in Europe
(27.09.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.18/vista