By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Nikki Tait in,Brussels
Published: July 25 2009 03:00 | Last updated: July 25 2009 03:00
Microsoft has made a sweeping move to put its decade-long fight with Brussels behind it, with a proposal that would prompt personal computer users in Europe to choose if they want to use an alternative to the Internet Explorer web browser.
Officials in Brussels said they "welcomed" the proposals and would now look into the practical effectiveness of the company's suggestions. Last night there seemed to be considerable optimism in Brussels that some form of settlement could emerge from the latest talks.
The move was also welcomed by some of Microsoft's rivals, who have turned to European regulators to try to loosen the strong grip that the Windows operating system has given the company over the software industry.
Hakon Wium Lie, chief technology officer of Opera, a Norwegian browser-maker whose complaint sparked the latest dispute in Brussels, said the Microsoft proposal appeared to go a long way to mitigating the impact of Windows' dominance and would lead to a far more open market for internet browsers in Europe.
Microsoft has made at least two other attempts to reach a broad settlement with Brussels since losing a landmark legal case before the Court of First Instance, Europe's senior court, in September 2007. The latest effort comes as its fight with Europe was about to come to a head, with Neelie Kroes, European competition commissioner, moving towards imposing a swingeing penalty on the company over its "bundling" of the IE browser with Windows.
The proposal is also designed to head off a second battle over interoperability, the ease with which other technologies can work with Windows, prompted by a broad complaint to Brussels by ECIS, a trade group comprised of rivals, including Google and IBM.
"This would address an extremely wide swath of issues for us and the rest of the industry that have been there for the past decade," Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said of the settlement proposal. Asked if it would end Microsoft's tortuous and protracted fight with Brussels, he said: "You can never say never but if you look at the issues on the table, this would go very far."
Brussels first began pushing Microsoft towards offering PC users a choice of internet browsers early this year, though the software company resisted the move, claiming it would hurt PC makers. Yesterday, the company published a proposal that would present all PC users who have Windows XP, Windows Vista or the forthcoming Windows 7 with a "ballot screen" offering them a choice of browsers, to be downloaded over the internet.
"No other company in the industry has offered to commit to as much in the way of interoperability as we have offered in our proposal today," Mr Smith said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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