EC na boete nog niet klaar met Microsoft

Overview

1. Microsoft is abusing its overwhelmingly dominant positions on the markets for PC operating systems, browsers and personal productivity applications (PPAs) in violation of Article 82 of the EC Treaty through a variety of anti-competitive behaviours, including in particular:
- Bundling multiple software products with the Windows operating system;
- Biasing the user interface and operation of Windows XP and the products bundled with Windows to advantage Microsoft�s own software and services;
- Imposing Microsoft proprietary technologies, protocols and formats;
- Employing abusive licensing and other exclusionary practices vis-à-vis PC OEMs to foreclose the PC OEM distribution channel to competing products; and
- Refusing to disclose the document formats for the programs in Microsoft�s Office suite of personal productivity applications.

2. Microsoft�s abusive behaviour designed into or accompanying Windows XP serves both to protect its superdominant position for desktop operating systems and its related superdominant positions for PPAs and browsers, as well as to leverage those superdominant positions into markets where it has not yet achieved such dominance, including:
- the market for media player software;
- the market for email client software;
- the markets for instant messaging software and services;
- the markets for server operating system software;
- the markets for server applications (notably, mail server and collaboration software and media server software);
- the market for authentication software;
- the markets for multi-media content/management software (including digital rights management software);
- the markets for consumer Internet portals and Internet advertising;
- the markets for handheld computing device operating systems and applications software;
- the markets for smart phone operating systems and applications software; and
- the markets for software for various other non-PC devices such as game consoles and set-top boxes.

3. The forms of Microsoft�s abusive conduct are often closely interrelated, and their market foreclosure effects in many instances reinforce each other. The effectiveness of Microsoft�s anti-competitive behaviours in preserving Microsoft�s existing desktop dominance and in leveraging that dominance into related markets can only truly be understood if these behaviours and their exclusionary impact are viewed as a whole, rather than examined in isolation from each.