Posted on 09/21/2006 9:10:10 AM PDT by ConservativeMind
Two U.S. software firms are asking the European Commission to take action against Microsoft's new Vista operating system, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Adobe Systems has told EU regulators that Microsoft should be banned from incorporating free competing software for reading and creating electronic documents with Vista, the paper said, quoting people familiar with the situation.
Antivirus software maker Symantec will send officials to Brussels, Belgium, next week to brief journalists about features of Vista that it says will undercut rival makers of computer security software, the paper said.
Symantec confirmed on Thursday that two executives would travel to Brussels next week to discuss Vista and security: Rowan Trollope, vice president of consumer products and solutions, and Bruce McCorkendale, senior engineer in the technology strategy office.
The duo plans to talk to journalists. It is not clear if they would also meet European Union officials, European representatives of the Symantec said.
Adobe was not immediately available for comment.
The Commission, Europe's top antitrust authority, has expressed concerns about Vista, saying there was a risk that Microsoft could shut out competition in computer security by tying new security features into the system.
In other news: Novell revs Linux for rapid response Web 2.0 in business: Getting there, slowly Mixed messages on HP pretexting start News.com Extra: $2,500 DIY car gets 100 mpg Video: Welcome to the 'House of Innovation' Microsoft, which hopes that the Commission will not require removal of security features in Europe, has said the product is on course for a public launch in January.
The standoff between the software giant and the Commission is the latest in a lengthy spat between the two.
In 2004, the Commission found that Microsoft had abused its market dominance in audiovisual software players and office servers, hurting smaller competitors with competing products. It forced the U.S. firm to strip out Windows Media Player from its ubiquitous operating system.
The Commission levied a record 497 million euro ($613 million) fine, which Microsoft has challenged.
In July, EU regulators fined the company a further 280.5 million euros ($357 million) for defying the ruling, which required it to share information on its servers with rivals.
Microsoft isn't preventing them from selling their wares.
This is simply sour grapes, clogging the courtroom with a petty argument, with the possibility of a judgment that could hurt everyone in time.
In other news, Alpine stereo systems is suing GM for selling vehicles that have a radio built in. This "bundling" is a form of anti-competative behavior according to the lawsuit.
I also don't believe that there will be any widespread migration Vista until it actually gets real world use.
The fact that Symantec sucks is preventing them from selling their wares.
Adobe is the new Real.
We loved to hate Microsoft Windows because it was such a vulnerable system. Now Gates & Co., however belatedly, are integrating safeguards and the independent purveyors of Band-Aids are upset. This, I say, not a big deal, only what Microsoft ought to have been doing all along.
The idea of a PDF compatible browser and editor isn't new; there is open source software on Linux for that. Microsoft will find it difficult to embrace/extend/extinguish Adobe anytime soon because PDF has a goodly established base in UNIX/Mac world.
They mainly won't be able to do it because PDF has mindshare and many consider it synonymous with portable documents, just like Windows does with operating systems. The PDF format is open, but no program can say it's writing a PDF unless it conforms to PDF standards. To do otherwise is violating Adobe's license and trademarks. And a Microsoft document export wouldn't be popular, because it isn't "PDF."
IOW, Microsoft would have a hell of a court case if it tried embrace-extend-eliminate with PDF. It would also have a problem reaching the printing market, which lives and breathes on exact-to-standard PDF files.
I agree with your statements at the application level. The middle layer, IMHO, is a bit more complicated. For example, should service resolution be considered an essential facility that cannot be bundled? During the MS antitrust I raised this question and was told it was outside of the scope of the antitrust claims at that time. The challenge with the middle layer is that the OS provider can resolve service resolution in their favor in a way that stiffles competition at the end points.
Adobe was offered the chance to ship PDF support with the next version of Office. They backed off after they found out that they were going to have to compete with XPS.
Personally, I'm sick of the bloatware that Acrobat Reader has become.
I hope they plan to sue Apple and Linux for producing secure OSs. WTF is this all about?
I love the business model....if at first you don't succeed, sue your competition.
I've seen more and more lawsuits from businesses who cannot make it in the arena run to European courts and demand that their competition be brought down to their level.
Any reason why they ran to European courts and not US courts? The US courts would laugh them out of the room. But they take their "arguments" to the socialists and they stand a chance.
Symantec has been extremely successful with their acquisition of Veritas storage software. They're joining storage with security and their stock price has been rising from what I've seen in the papers.
~ Blue Jays ~
No kidding. About a year ago, Adobe Reader suddenly decided to become the default program for opening everything on my computer - including .exe and .dll files. Which meant pretty much nothing worked. I had to manually delete enough of its own files to kill it before it let my computer free and when I tried reinstalling it did the same thing. I could have figured out what the problem was but it was too much work. Now I just use a freeware PDF reader/writer and I'm much happier.
Adobe doesn't SELL Acrobat reader; it gives it away for free. Microsoft's business practice is to give away a product until it bankrupts its competitors, and then sell it for several times the traditional price.
Remember Lotus 1-2-3? Remember WordPerfect? MS gave away Excel and Word free, until they killed off Lotus and WordPerfect. They've tried the same thing with Interent Explorer, until Sun and Mozilla went open-source to foil them.
Adobe plays this like a fiddle.
They hand out the reader, but charge an arm and leg for the writer.
Why doesn't Symantec and Adobe go after Apple?
Products to convert standard documents to .pdf files are a dime a dozen or free. Adobe charges "an arm and leg" for what is also a design tool. If MS dominates the .pdf biz, what they'll do is start adding proprietary functions, so that people using their product will inadverdantly be adding in stuff that makes people use MS products. They already did it with JAVA, HTML, and a host of other product lines. Thank God they lost anti-trust lawsuits, or you'd be paying $400 for your web browser by now.
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