There’s a price to pay for not giving consumers a choice in terms of what browser they can use. It’s $732 million. That’s the amount of money the EU fined Microsoft recently for violating the terms of their anti-trust settlement. What does this mean? For one, it means that other browsers will soon make their way to Windows 8, but it also has implications for other companies, including Google.
Here with the details is the New York Times:
The fine, equivalent to $732 million, is first time that E.U. regulators have punished a company for neglecting to comply with the terms of an antitrust settlement, and it could signal their determination to enforce deals in other cases, including one involving Google, where such an agreement is under discussion.
“Legally binding commitments reached in antitrust decisions play a very important role in our enforcement policy, because they allow for rapid solutions to competition problems,” said Joaquín Almunia, the Union’s competition commissioner. “Of course such decisions require strict compliance” and the “failure to comply is a very serious infringement that must be sanctioned accordingly.”
The penalty imposed Wednesday brings the overall fines imposed on Microsoft by European antitrust regulators during the past decade to €2.26 billion.
“We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We provided the commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake – or anything similar – in the future,” Microsoft said.