European Union regulators may still be fighting yesterday's antitrust war against Microsoft's Media Player while the software giant marches on to conquer Google. The search engine seems so impregnable that "to google" has become a verb meaning to look for something on the Web. But Microsoft has shown elsewhere that it can go from nothing to monopoly. The European Commission will rule soon that Microsoft illegally bundled its Media Player audio-visual software into its dominant Windows operating systems to help defeat rival RealNetworks. While the investigation was under way, Microsoft's market share zoomed past RealNetworks.
In the 1990s, Microsoft crushed the once-dominant pioneer Web browser Netscape Navigator, clearing the way for its own Internet Explorer to become ubiquitous. The United States took the software giant to court and won its antitrust case. But the remedies the government then negotiated are narrow and, critics say, poorly enforced. Microsoft has said the remedies solved any problems. In a recent court filing, Microsoft said it "has made compliance with its obligations ... a top priority of the company, and the company continues to devote substantial resources to its compliance work." The U.S. judge in the case agreed, saying that for the most part, "The (court) decree seems to be working."
News source: Reuters
