Microsoft fine inevitable
"I can’t imagine another way," Kroes said when quizzed about the issue during a visit to Berlin.
No EU member state was fundamentally opposed to the imposition of a financial penalty, Kroes said, adding that the final decision would be taken by consensus.
The EU competition watchdog is scheduled to issue its verdict soon, with competition experts meeting on Monday to decide the size of the daily fine to be slapped on Microsoft.
Kroes declined to name a figure, but observers in Brussels estimate it could amount to $2.5 million a day.
After a five-year investigation, the commission took its biggest competition decision ever in 2004 in ruling that Microsoft had broken EU law by using a quasi-monopoly in personal computer operating systems to thwart rivals.
In March 2004, the European Union’s executive arm fined the software group a record 497 million euros for abusing its dominant market power.
In addition to slapping the fine on Microsoft, the EU ordered the company to sell a version of its Windows operating system without its Media Player software and to divulge information about Windows needed by makers of rival products.
Although Microsoft has paid the fine, it has fought tooth-and-nail over the information it is supposed to divulge to competitors.
Frustrated that Microsoft has not complied with the ruling, Brussels has threatened to slap daily fines on Microsoft, backdated to December 15 – its deadline to respect the ruling.
But Microsoft says that it has released reams of key computer code needed by programmers of rival products and claims therefore that further fines go too far.
Inet-Bridge
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