Federal Europe is launching yet another investigation into Micro$oft 3 months after concluding their last investigation which resulted in a €500m fine.

The first investigation was into allegations that Micro$oft was shutting out rivals in order to dominate the web market.  They were found guilty in October 2004 and launched an unsuccesful appeal which ended in October 2007.  This latest investigation is into interoperability with rival applications and has been requested by Opera, which is based in Norway, and a European software developers group.

I don’t like the way Micro$oft does business.  I don’t like the way they price their products out of reach of most people then impose restrictive measures on their software to try and stop people from pirating their software.  However, this is a step too far.  No other company is subjected to this kind of treatment.  No other company would be forced to hand over its trade secrets to its rivals.

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