Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/06/fines_ahoy_for_ms/
Commissioner says MS fines inevitable
€2.5m a day still pending
Posted in Hardware, 6th July 2006 10:51 GMT
Free whitepaper – Selecting an Industry-Standard Metric for Data Center Efficiency
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told reporters yesterday that fines against Microsoft for failing to comply with 2004's anti-trust judgement were inevitable.
Asked if she would fine Microsoft, Kroes said: "I can't imagine any other way."
The commission ruled in 2004 that Microsoft was abusing its monopoly position. It made various demands, such as offering a version of Windows without Media Player and opening up APIs for servers.
Kroes is on a two day trip to Germany and made the comments as she arrived in Berlin.
It is believed a meeting was held on Monday to inform individual country regulators that the commission was going ahead with fining the software giant.
The fine is €2.5m a day and has been backdated to last December.
Earlier this week, Microsoft agreed to pay Korean regulators $35m to settle anti-trust complaints.
More from Reuters here (http://today.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-07-06T084544Z_01_L06884592_RTRIDST_0_EU-MICROSOFT-UPDATE-1.XML&rpc=66). ®