AP – Microsoft Corp. said Friday that small companies and their customers would suffer most if it is forced to remove its digital media software from Windows, while the European Union accused it of being “paternalistic” in trying to decide what’s best for everyone.
[Via Yahoo! News – Technology]
In my view this is not Microsoft trying to decide what is good for everyone. Some technologies can be viewed as so mainstream / commodity that they should be part of the platfrom you use as a consumer or enterprise. We have seen this over time that once a technology becomes mainstream it is offered in lots of products. Besides that consumers / enterprises are still free to choose their own mediaplayer; realplayer, musicmatch or what you have still works just as well.
In the current status quo, Microsoft is forced to put a lot of legal and engineering costs in a direction that has totally nothing to do with making great software. Hundreds of millions down the drain, there is nothing paternalistic about that. I guess this is how the EU makes money, the residents of the EU don’t benefit from this “income” in any way.
