I am referring to the EU Commission ruling in 2009, which, again, is not related to the US case you mentioned. 2009 EU Case was not a US case.

Also, Tom, not to be picky, but the case you mentioned and linked does not state that "IE harmed competition", which means little. It is a browser, not a company. Unless you mean its existence harms competion (which means MS can't create a browser), that means nothing.

The case you mention does not even state that IE being bundled with Windows (dominant) harmed competition.

It states instead that Microsoft operated illegally by harming competition (both technically and in other ways) in order to favor IE (and other products) versus Netscape (and other products).
It states this in the section pertaining and mentioning Internet Explorer.

Now, as you can see, this is precisely what I have mentioned in my previous emails and above. I agree with this ruling because Microsoft was specifically not disclosing APIs and access to its platform in various ways.

The 2009 case in EU has completely different philosophical grounds, it is about a different fact still pertaining IE, and I disagree with that ruling, in principle - which is possibly more important to me, as it shows deep difference in core values about economy and freedom - and practically - as it shows to me that the EU commission found a solution which I find naive and quite meaningless technically.




Right. Now, if the EU Commission accused Google of illegally advertising Chrome on its homepage >because of it's dominant position<, forcing it to advertise for free a number of existing browsers on the marked, I'd be in a very similar disagreement.

Please, understand that is very different from an hypothetical case where Google >prevents< other browsers to advertise on their home page.




If that is the case, than I agree with the investigation. Please see my original email on this. While I have not looked at the details about this specific case, I suspect, however, that the EU Commission is going beyond this.



Right, or, I'd personally be perfectly fine if Google also acted as a travel booking search agent, provided that in such market it does not prevent technically others from competing, or, in other words, provided it does not place a barrier to entry based on anything else than quality of the service offered (whether they consist of technology aimed at harming competitors, refusal to sign contracts, corrupting a politicians, sending mob to threaten competitors, or whatever you may think of).



And that is precisely the point: unfortunately, no, that is not the type of harm the EU looked for in the IE case in 2009 that lead to ballot screen.

I just found out that Wikipedia has a nice summary of the many issues Microsoft has with the EU Commission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission

Now, as you can see there, most of the issues go way back in time, and they are ALL related to Microsoft preventing competition by not disclosing relevant tech info to competitors. I won't get into them. While in principle I agree, as you dive into specifics situation is a bit more complex than that and there I also find differences with what generally happens int he US.
But then, at the end, you find among the other cases, the IMO infamous IE / Ballot screen thing.
Citing wikipedia:
"In January 2009, the European Commission announced it would investigate the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows operating systems from Microsoft, saying "Microsoft's tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice."[29][30] "
It is the fact itself that IE is in Windows that is wrong, in the minds of EU commissioners.
This is something I disagree completely with, that I fight to its core, honestly.
I disagree so much with it, I even question if there's any good intent in that, or just the desire of the EU commissioners to just matter.