Microsoft has today been fined a record amount by the EU for being tight wads about releasing hooks into the windoze operating system for other companies to latch onto.

Maybe this has some connection to the recent declaration by Micro$oft that it is planning to increase it’s inter-operability; or am I being cynical?

My comments about the flying pigs in a recent post of mine are very relevant and talk about this very statement.  But I really don’t think I am being cynical.  The cynicism is purely on the part of Microsoft and the lawyers they employ; and the EU commission has seen this at first hand, enduring the Fabian tactics for years,  and have reacted accordingly.

Without taking the analogy too far and setting fixed sides to it, maybe EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes is the Scipio in this conflict.  Scipio is the general that defeated Hannibal, the winner of the greatest battle of all time but loser of the war.

I don’t know if anyone has spotted the pun, but the case was originally brought against Microsoft by (amongst others) Opera, the Scandinavian web browser software, complaining about the lack of inter-OPERAbility.

boom, boom! (I still prefer Firefox though…)

No related posts.