The
European Commission has fined US software giant Microsoft for breaching the
terms of an antitrust deal it had reached with the company. The Commission said
that Europeans were not granted a choice of Web browsers.
The EU
executive on Wednesday slapped a 561-million-euro ($731 million) fine on the US
software company Microsoft for what it called a breach of an anti-monopolies
deal that the firm had previously agreed to.
The
European Commission found that Microsoft had failed to offer Windows 7 users a
choice of Internet browsers in line with a five-year accord reached between the
two sides in 2009.
"Microsoft
failed to rollout the browser choice screen with its Windows 7 Service Pack 1
from May 2011 until July 2012," the Commission announced in a statement.
Not a first
EU
Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that the US company's failure to
comply with legally binding commitments was "a very serious infringement
that must be sanctioned accordingly."
As early as
October of last year, Microsoft apologized for the mistake, citing a technical
error as the cause and insisting that it had not been out to abuse its market
dominance.
Wednesday's
fine was far below the maximum 10 percent of revenues the EU's executive could
have fined in antitrust proceedings, which in Microsoft's case would have been
about $7 billion. All in all, the EU has now fined Microsoft a total of almost
2.2 billion euros, including sanctions imposed on three previous occasions.
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