Gary Barnett's Blog

The EU has recently announced two new anti-trust investigations against Microsoft. The first is the result of a complaint by European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) in which ECIS alleges that Microsoft has illegally refused to provide interoperability information relating to a number of its products – including Office, .NET and several of its server platforms. The Commission’s announcement goes on to state ;

The Commission’s examination will therefore focus on all these areas, including the question whether Microsoft’s new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with competitors’ products.

The second complaint, in which the browser company Opera is cited as the company making the allegations, Microsoft is (once more) being investigated for “tying” the explorer browser to its operating system. The Commission goes on;

In addition, allegations of tying of other separate software products by Microsoft, including desktop search and Windows Live have been brought to the Commission’s attention.

No doubt this announcement will bring more joy to Microsoft’s opponents – but that’s not really the point of the European Commission, the key question is whether the commission’s actions will actually result in greater choice, better products and lower prices for consumers.

And given the Commission’s record thus far…. I’m not sure that it will.

In the interests of disclosure, I should say that I’ve been very critical of both Microsoft and the EU throughout my coverage of the anti-trust saga – One one hand, I think that it was right to require Microsoft to open up its protocols (and I’ve spent hours trying to explain to Microsoft how doing so would actually benefit them). On the other, I think that the EU’s management of the process has been shamefully shambolic and arrogant. Like another analyst – the wonderful James G I feel obliged to add a picture of a donkey whenever the EU is mentioned (Mr G got there first with the donkey pic I should add).

I should also disclose that Microsoft has been a client in the past, and may well be one in the future.

The two issuesAs is often the case, the really interesting “bit” is never mentioned in the headline – Both cases raise issues where it comes to the “oh and we’re going to look at this as well…” bits in the statement.

Both issues need to be looked at separately -

The first issue – Disclosure of interoperability information

The first is related to the EU’s “decision” of March 2004 in which Microsoft was required to document key client-server protocols within the Windows O/S – specifically Microsoft Workgroup Server. It should be noted that the formal text does not mention the .NET framework – So while “related” the addition of .NET to the mix would represent an extension of the decision. The interesting tid bit comes at the end – where the EU adds Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML for short) to the mix.

The inclusion of the .NET framework would increase the stakes significantly but would also potentially create all sorts of pandora’s box effects – Not the least of which would be the raising of some difficult questions concerning the fact that J2EE hasn’t exactly kept its early promise to become the de-facto framework for application development. As it happens, I think the main beneficiary of an “Open .NET” would be Microsoft, and for years I’ve tried to convince the company that it should give up its addiction to the OS kernel and focus on the value-added layers. If .NET were fully ported to Linux, there’s no doubt it would give Linux a lift (not least because writing GUI software for Linux is way beyond the experience – if not the ability – of most programmers) – but if VB developers could develop full-blown apps that make complete use of the .NET framework and which run on Windows or Linux you’d find a lot of developers using VB to write Linux apps. The Mono project has already made considerable progress in creating a rich port (I say “rich” because it’s not quite a 100% port – but it can be used today to develop proper cross-platform .NET applications).

The addition of OOXML to the investigation, almost as if it were an afterthought, is interesting, because I think that OOXML is by far the most important issue in the context of “levelling the playing field”. It is such an important issue, that I think it should be the subject of an entirely separate investigation. Microsoft has done a full-on, professional, job of getting OOXML onto the agenda as a prospective OSI standard. They lobbied, invested, cajoled and co-erced OOXML through the early OSI processes, and it seemed almost inevitable that OOXML would be fast-tracked through the OSI process – so it was something of a pleasant surprise when it stalled. Not because I want OOXML to fail necessarily, but because it needs to be subject to a much higher level of scrutiny and assessment than the OSI fast-track process would allow.

The EU, and the US DOJ, should both investigate the extent to which the world actually needs two differing document formatting standards – I happen to think that one is enough.

The second issue – Browser Tie-in

My first reaction on seeing that the company making the complaint was Opera was, to be honest, to laugh out loud. While the Opera browser has all sorts of wonderful properties but it’s a big fat loser in the desktop browser wars. Any claims about it being difficult to compete with Microsoft have to be off-set by the fact that Firefox has been doing rather well (Although gushing statements that FF has 25% share are tough to prove – I think that at close to 14% Firefox has made amazing progress).

The “thing” in this though, is the extension..

In addition, allegations of tying of other separate software products by Microsoft, including desktop search and Windows Live have been brought to the Commission’s attention.

As it happens, the tie-in between Windows Live and IE is irritating – The only time I ever use IE is when I’m checking a legacy hotmail account – And I really would like Microsoft to disentangle the two so I can use FF. But… as Mr Governor rightly points out in his blog on this topic – “Market pressure is where it’s at”.

The world is changing – faster than a bumbling bureaucracy like the EU can chase it – and potentially faster than Microsoft can…

[EDITED - to correct terminology. I'd used "Open XML" to describe Microsoft's "Office Open XML" and as Hoàng Đức Hiếu  has pointed out, this isn't accurate]

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