Microsoft, Stubbornly Disobedient

Microsoft has a long record of abuses of its corner position in Europe, that the European Commission authorities have tried to correct. Yesterday, the Commission announced that it has imposed a fine of 561 million euros on the U.S. informatics company because it had not kept its promise of installing on its Windows operating system a screen with options that permitted downloading a browser other than Explorer, which Microsoft owns. The penalized company claims that it was a technical error, but it is difficult to believe that it would have produced an oversight in the fulfillment of a promise so important to the European authorities.

That’s because, with this latest fine, Microsoft accumulates four serious sanctions, for a total amount of 2.2 billion. We are facing a case of stubborn disobedience that does not line up with the strict market competition requirements that apply in the United States. One of the explanations of such persistent behavior — damaging also for its image among European consumers — is that the payment of sanctions is inferior to the benefits derived from the exercise of a semi-monopoly. It is not a rare case; it can be observed in other markets with a chronic deficit of competition in continental Europe, such as fuel or electricity. Legislation is short on the calculation of the fine, and there are also difficulties in collecting it, and that’s why the sanctions have become a mere formality.

It should not be dismissed that Microsoft wants to sustain a pulse with the Commission because it considers that, in the long run, it can gain a sufficient number of clients to mimic the effects of a screen with options for downloading other browsers. The question today, after four sanctions, is if the Commission will prepare measures more dissuasive than fines.