Rivals Attack Microsoft Vista Launch In Europe: SUNW, IBM, ADBE, RHAT, ORCL

Investing

Published: January 26, 2007 11:00 am

Some of Microsoft’s largest global rivals are trying to use the European Union’s 2004 antitrust edict to get portions of Vista changed. They claim that the new OS contains products that will allow it to use its share in the computer market to unfairly market against products that compete with theirs.

The group includes Sun Microsystems, IBM, Adobe, Redhat, and Oracle.

The action is not without risk to Microsoft. RealNetworks (RNWK) successfully challenged the way that the Microsoft Windows Media player worked within the larger Windows platform. Real’s media player business was badly damaged by MSFT’s bundling of its own player into Windows.

Microsoft has spent tens of million of dollars on antitrust actions all over the world. It looks like the checkbook will have to come out again.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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