Windows XP in the clear? kind of, well up till it"s release anyway
The European Commission said Monday it was not examining Microsoft"s Windows XP operating system, due to go on sale next week, as part of an antitrust investigation into the U.S. software giant.
Amelia Torres, spokeswoman for EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti, told a news briefing, "At this point, the Commission is not examining XP officially or unofficially."
She was responding to a report in The Financial Times on Monday that Monti planned to start a preliminary inquiry into Windows XP and had sent the company a number of questions to discover if the bundling of new software applications into the operating system was anticompetitive.
Torres said there had been no new development since Aug. 30, when the Commission sent Microsoft a so-called statement of objections, saying it was probing whether the company illegally tied its Media Player to the Windows operating system.
"We still await Microsoft"s reply," she said.