Microsoft Corp. now has only weeks left until the European Commission decides whether to take steps toward fining it up to $5 million a day, a Commission spokesman said on Friday. "Within a matter of weeks, rather than months, we will have to decide whether we are satisfied that they are complying with the remedies to our satisfaction," spokesman Jonathan Todd said.
"And if they"re not, we"ll have to decide whether we"ll begin the proceedings to begin daily fines. But we have not reached that stage." The Commission, which polices competition in the 25-nation European Union, fined the world"s leading software company a record 497 million euros ($654.9 million) on March 24, 2004, and ordered it to change the way it does business.