The European Commission's antitrust investigators have not been impressed by Microsoft's suggestion of distributing rivals' software, according to sources. The European Commission has rejected Microsoft's offer to settle its antitrust case by putting competitors' software on CD-ROMs sold with computers, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.
The proposal and its rejection, first reported by the Financial Times, came as part of continuing negotiations between the commission and the software company. The commission believed the CD-ROMs distributed with new computers would get little use and would be an ineffective channel for distribution, the source said. The commission's proposed final decision, which may not include any suggested remedies to its antitrust concerns, is expected to be considered by an advisory committee made up of representatives of the 15 European Union states in the first and third weeks of March, a second source familiar with the case said.
According to a draft decision, the European Commission has decided that Microsoft abused its dominant position, and curbed competition by tying its Media Player program -- used for playing music and videos -- to its Windows operating system. The commission has been considering an order that would tell Microsoft to unbundle Media Player from Windows, which the company insists would wreck the system. Alternatively, it has considered an order which would require Microsoft to bundle in the audio-visual software of rivals, but as a part of the software package on the computer rather than on a separate CD-ROM.
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News source: ZDNet UK
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