European Commission gives Microsoft hefty fine yet again

The focus of legal battles over competition in the technology industry has shifted back towards Microsoft yet again after the European Union fined it €561m. Microsoft have been fined for not sticking to a 2009 ruling that instructed them to offer a choice of web browsers after complaints from rivals that said it had been favouring its Internet Explorer software.

It follows many years of heavy criticism towards Microsoft over the way the company bundles its software with its widely-used Windows operating system. In 2004, Microsoft were fined €497m, the largest ever imposed by the EU at the time. Then in 2006 it was fined an additional €280.5m, followed by a €899m fine in 2008. After the ruling in 2009, the company began offering a choice of browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and the Opera browser, but in an update to Windows 7 in early 2011 the choice screen was removed.

Microsoft describe the removal of the screen as a “technical error”, but the EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia was adamant that new fine was needed to deter any companies going back on previous rulings. He said: “In 2009, we closed our investigation about a suspected abuse of dominant position by Microsoft due to the tying of Internet Explorer to Windows by accepting commitments offered by the company. A failure to comply is a very serious infringement that must be sanctioned accordingly.”

In response to the fine, Microsoft admitted their mistake in a statement: “We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it. We provided the Commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake – or anything similar – in the future.”

Recent years have seen a series of courtroom disputes between tech giants, with Apple, Google and Samsung fighting over patent infringements and competition.