____/ Linonut on Saturday 01 March 2008 16:44 : \____
> * Roy Schestowitz peremptorily fired off this memo:
>
>> The EU's New Heat on Microsoft
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>| On top of fines and new inquiries, Microsoft is in danger of EU governments
>>| effectively banning its software to create documents
>>|
>>| [...]
>>|
>>| Compatibility Advantage
>>|
>>| The new European investigations come as Microsoft finds itself in danger of
>>| seeing EU governments effectively ban its software to create documents. The
>>| European Commission and its member states have been mulling a mandate that
>>| all government documents be created in the Open Document Format (ODF), an
>>| open source competitor to the proprietary format used in Microsoft Word.
>> `----
>>
>>
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2008/tc20080227_967982.htm?campaign_id=yhoo
>
> Didn't that hostile goober, Ballmer, once threaten to remove Windows
> from the European market?
>
> Promises promises.
>
> Well, if you want something done, ya gotta do it yerself.
Microsoft /needs/ Europe. Very few countries pay (or can afford to pay) for
Windows and Office. Always remind yourself that no matter how many
people /use/ these cash cows, not many people actually /pay/ for these. The
European market is more affluent, so that's where a lot of Microsoft's income
will arrive from.
People get distracted by Windows and Office 'market share', but how many people
in China and India, for example, actually pay for the software (esp. outside
the business setting)? Oh, and be sure that not many people use the XBox and
the Zune outside the US. In fact, even though I cannot recall the specifics at
the moment, Germany rejected the Zune (or maybe Microsoft did not introduce it
there because it was abysmal).
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | How I learned to stop worrying and love GNU/Linux
http://Schestowitz.com | Open Prospects | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Tasks: 131 total, 1 running, 130 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
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