This decision comes as Microsoft has continued to abuse its powerful market position after the EU's March 2004 decision requiring it to change its practices. An investigation into the company's behavior was triggered by a 1998 complaint by Sun Microsystems. It alleged Microsoft was refusing to supply information that servers needed to be able to work with Windows. This information was eventually made available to rivals, but at unreasonable prices -- which rendered the offer of the information pointless. According to Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition Policy, "Microsoft's behavior did not just harm a few individuals or a handful of big companies... directly and indirectly this had negative effects on millions of offices of companies and governments around the world."This is the third time in four years that EU has imposed fines or penalties on Microsoft. The first fine was for the abuse itself everything up until March 2004. In July 2006, another penalty was imposed for non-delivery of complete and accurate interoperability information. And now, the penalty is for unreasonable royalty rates up until October 2007.
Kroes said the European Commission's being forced to levy these three fines reflects a clear disregard by Microsoft of its legal obligations, and that the fine is a reasonable response to a series of quite unreasonable actions.
After three years of allegedly illegal behavior, it appears that Microsoft has finally come into compliance with the 2004 decision. But the company is still not completely in the clear: last month, the EU launched a fresh probe into issues relating to MS Office and Internet Explorer.
So is this a lot of money? Actually, we hear that this much money equals two weeks' free cash flow for Microsoft; analysts say this is a drop in the ocean for them. You don't call them M$ without reason.Source
