Microsoft Corp. still hopes to settle with the European Commission over the sanctions ordered against it to correct its anticompetitive behavior, even as its appeal of the case winds its way through the legal channels, a senior company executive said Monday. "We definitely want to settle. We just said it in court and I"ll say it again," Jean-Philippe Courtois, Microsoft"s chief executive officer (CEO) for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), said at the Etre technology conference in Cannes.
The Commission ruled last March that Microsoft had abused its dominance in the PC operating systems market to gain an advantage in related markets, such as that for media players. It ordered the company to pay a fine of €497 million, or more than $600 million, and offer a version of its operating system without the Windows Media Player (WMP). It also ordered it to reveal enough Windows code to allow rivals to build competing server software that works well with Windows.