EU to investigate Microsoft over browser choice (again)

[woofy]

Remember when the European Commission found Microsoft guilty of anti-trust practices and ordered it to offer users a choice of browser?

In December 2009, the company was ordered to give Windows users a 'choice screen' for the following five years, offering them alternatives to the then-dominant Internet Explorer.


But while you may remember this, it seems Microsoft didn't. When it launched Windows 7 Service Pack 1 in February last year, the choice screen was conspicuous by its absence. This, says the Commission, means that as many as 28 million PC owners never saw the screen.


But despite this, says the Commission, the company still assured it that it was complying with its commitments in December last year.
As a result, the EC has, rather wearily, one presumes, yet again opened proceedings against Microsoft.


"We take compliance with our decisions very seriously. And I trusted the company's reports were accurate. But it seems that was not the case, so we have immediately taken action," says Joaqu

 

[easily confused]

"It's also launched its own internal investigation to examine how the mistake was made."

In other words, what poor schmuck are we going to blame because we got caught......AGAIN!! The unfortunate thing about all of these "commissions" is that they never really seem to accomplish much but they do keep some people employed. Fines, obviously, don't seem to deter companies from breaking laws so maybe it's about time that some criminal charges are laid and someone, at the top, spends a bit of time in the crowbar hotel. Maybe, then, they might get the message. Short of that, all of these silly shenanigans and commissions will simply keep repeating themselves. JMO