Microsoft settles 10 year competition fight with European Commission

Microsoft and the European commission have ended 10 years of fighting with an agreement over Microsoft’s alleged bundling of its Internet Explorer browser software with its Windows operating system. The Commission said that the bundling contravened European competition law as it was an abuse of the software giant’s dominant position in the market for operating systems. Now, Microsoft is willing to offer users a choice between different web browsers when using Windows.

This was not he first fight between the two parties. In 2004, following a long investigation, the Commission fined Microsoft €497m for two competition law breaches. One was Microsoft withholding vital information about the Windows operating system from makers of server software, thereby gaining an unfair advantage over them for its own server software products. The other was that it unfairly bundled its Media Player software into Windows.