Sign In
SHARE
Microsoft: Where Fines are a Cost of Doing Business
Neelie Kroes ain't pulling her punches:
"Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of E.U. competition policy that the commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision," Ms. Kroes said.
...and so did Microsoft end up on the wrong end of a $1.35 billion antitrust fine from the EU. This is becoming a semi-regular occurrence:
The latest fines come on top of an initial fine of ???497 million that Microsoft was required to pay when first found guilty of monopolistic behavior. Having failed to comply with the commission's ruling, the regulator fined the software giant an additional ???280.5 million in July 2006.
Adding Wednesday's fine, Microsoft will have handed over a total of ???1.68 billion, or $2.5 billion at current exchange rates, to the European antitrust regulator.
One of the more interesting bits of Freakonomics was the experiment that showed parents showing up later to pick their kids up from school when they got fined for doing so. The fine ratifies the behavior, in some way. Or think about a situation where you're going on holiday and won't be back until after your library book is due to be returned. If you know you can pay a fine when you get back, it's possible that you'll think that fine to be "worth it" and therefore take the book with you.
I'm not saying that the benefits of its anticompetitive behavior were worth the $2.5 billion in costs that Microsoft has now garnered. But I do think that at least until very recently it considered these fines something of a cost of doing business. But this fine, along with last week's decision to open up Windows, should, I think, put an end to that. For the time being.
Loading...
Thank you for registering as a Portfolio.com Insider. Your comment has been added.
Create Your Public Profile
- The Times' Rorshach Geithner Story
- Apr 27 2009 9:26AM EDT
- Sinking Animal Spirits
- Apr 27 2009 8:45AM EDT
- Counter-cyclical Urban Policy
- Apr 26 2009 10:00AM EDT
- Be Your Own Counterfeiter
- Apr 26 2009 9:36AM EDT
- Being Tim Geithner
- Apr 25 2009 12:37PM EDT
- Notes From a Press Conference Naif
- Apr 25 2009 9:41AM EDT
- What Good is the News?
- Apr 25 2009 8:32AM EDT
- Stressful Enough
- Apr 24 2009 2:29PM EDT
- Not Regretting the Pound
- Apr 24 2009 1:09PM EDT
- Introducing the New Ford Squeeze
- Apr 24 2009 9:47AM EDT
- Non-Economic Questions of the Day
- Apr 24 2009 9:12AM EDT
- The Stress Test Blind Alley
- Apr 24 2009 8:36AM EDT
- Happy Hour
- Apr 23 2009 9:40PM EDT
- Recovery Without Rebalancing
- Apr 23 2009 6:13PM EDT
- The Shape of Your Recession
- Apr 23 2009 5:11PM EDT
Archive
Categories
Links
- Email Ryan Avent
- Econospeak
- Financial Crookery
- The Epicurean Dealmaker
- Naked Capitalism
- Alphaville
- Marginal Revolution
- The Panelist
- FP Passport
- Overcoming Bias
- Andrew Leonard
- Barry Ritholtz
- Brad Setser
- Carbon Tax Center
- Calculated Risk
- Greg Mankiw
- Free Exchange
- Dean Baker
- Alexander Campbell
- Kash Mansori
- The Bayesian Heresy
- A Fistful of Euros
- John Quiggin
- Michael Mandel
- Lance Knobel
- Mark Thoma
- Dan Gross
- Curbed
- Streetsblog
- Chris Anderson
- Deal Journal
- MarketBeat
- DealBook
- DealBreaker
- Carl Bialik
- Michelle Leder
- Brad DeLong
- Ultimi Barbarorum
