European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes hit out at Microsoft in comments to European parliamentarians today, saying it is "unacceptable" that the company continues to gain market share using tactics that were outlawed in the European Commission"s 2004 antitrust ruling against the software vendor. Three years later Microsoft still hasn"t complied with the main demand imposed by the European antitrust ruling: that the company share interoperability information inside Windows at a reasonable price to allow rival makers of workgroup servers to build products that work properly with PCs running Windows.
"Microsoft is constantly gaining market share and that is what is worrying in the workgroup server operating market," Kroes said, referring to server operating systems used to allow a team of people in an office to sign in, print and share files. She told the parliamentarians that Microsoft"s market share in this sector has continued to rise since the 2004 antitrust ruling. When the Commission began its antitrust investigation in 1999 Microsoft held between 35 percent and 40 percent market share. By 2004 it rose to around 60 percent and now it stands at between 70 percent and 75 percent. "That"s unacceptable," Kroes said.