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On July 31, 2006, the Commission said
that Microsoft had submitted the technical documents.
Michael Mann, spokesman for the Commission, said, "We have
received technical documents from Microsoft. Our people are
looking at it, including the trustee, and it's too early at
this stage to give any indication of whether there will be
another payment, another penalty, and if there is to be
another penalty, how much it would be."8
In addition to the antitrust ruling, Microsoft had a few
other problems with the European Commission. In March 2006,
Kroes had sent a letter to Microsoft highlighting a few
concerns about Windows Vista, its next generation operating
system, due to be launched in 2007. Some of the issues
highlighted were with regard to the integrated online search
feature and documents software. |
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Microsoft planned to integrate its Internet search service, MSN Search as
the default search engine in its new browser IE7, which was scheduled to be
released in the later part of 2006. In May 2006, Google Inc9.
(Google) filed a complaint with the EU Competition Commission when Microsoft
released a Beta 2 version of IE7, which had MSN Search as the default search
engine. Google described the move as monopolistic and anti-competitive, due
to Microsoft's dominance in the operating systems market. The move was seen
as a severe threat to Google as it could hamper its online search
advertising business in a market worth over US$ 10 billion (in 2005).
There were also concerns regarding Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS),
the company's document creation and viewing feature that was planned to be
included in the Windows Vista operating system. Many considered the XPS a
threat to the portable document feature (PDF) of Adobe Systems Inc. (Adobe).
Adobe had already threatened to file an antitrust complaint with the
European Commission against Microsoft, if it included the "save as PDF"
feature in Office 2007 and XPS in Windows Vista. In response to this,
Microsoft agreed to remove the "save as PDF" feature from the beta versions
of Microsoft Office 2007 and planned to offer this feature to users as a
free download. However, Microsoft had not agreed to remove XPS from Windows
Vista and "save as XPS" feature in Office 2007.
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[8] David Lawsky, "Microsoft submits documents in bid to avoid fine,"
http://today.reuters.co.uk, July 31, 2006.
[9] Google, Inc. was co-founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998.
Google is the world's most popular Internet search engine and has a
diversified range of products such as E-mail, blogs, etc.
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