Microsoft ruling: EC defends "political posturing"

EC competition commissioner Mario Monti has defended today's Microsoft ruling against staunch criticism that suggested the decisions taken in Brussels will prove ineffective and fail to form effective measures against the Redmond behemoth.

The most common criticism levelled against the ruling is that the $611m fine will hardly put a dent in the Microsoft balance sheet.

However, although Monti said "this is the largest fine ever imposed on a single company", he added that "too much importance is being put on the size of the fine" and insisted that the most important elements of the ruling are the "remedies" suggested to bring Microsoft's business into line with EU competition law.

Most notable is the ruling that Microsoft has been given 90 days to produce a version of its Windows operating system without Media Player.

While complying with that ruling will most likely prove irrelevant, with consumers likely to opt for a package that comes with more not less - for the same price - it is not even clear at this stage whether Microsoft will conform with Monti's "remedies".

"Microsoft has not indicated that it will comply with our remedies," he said. Nor did he rule out the widely anticipated appeal from Redmond.

That raises the question of what action will be taken against the convicted monopolist if it fails to meet the measures put forward by the EC.

"We are not making any accusations here," said Monti. "There is no reason to believe they will not make that deadline."

However, Neil Ward-Dutton, analyst at Ovum, was not convinced, suggesting that the ruling "smells of political posturing rather than the type of constructive thought which has never been more important."

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