# Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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So last week Microsoft announced that they were going to publish APIs for their major products along with expanding the interoperability lab and not suing open source developers for using their technology as long as it isn't commercial use. I thought it was a good move and will help the ecosystem around Microsofts platform. Today the EU fined Microsoft $1.3 Billion for charging competitors too much. Microsoft has said the fine is for past offences since they were told in October that they are in compliance. I can understand that Microsoft needs to pay for past sins. My big question is who gets the money? I wonder how much of it is going to the companies hurt by the over charging and how much is going to the lawyers and government coffers.

Thursday, February 28, 2008 11:47:14 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
This whole EU thing is getting ridiculous. They seem to be on a witch hunt to penalize people because they succeeded. Forcing MS to open things up just because you want to make it fair for others seems totally anti-capitalistic to me (although Europe these days is much more socialistic than capitalistic anyway). Google and Apple have succeeded in spite of MS dominance so has Firefox. Why is that? Because they created good products that people wanted. I can't help but feel that some of this government interference is people who couldn't win and do as Google and Apple did and searching for some to cry to and save them. Did MS and Intel do things wrong? Almost undoubtably - when you have market dominance like they did it is almost hard not to (not excusing them for their indiscretions, but just saying that it is understandable). AMD versus Intel is a classic example. AMD was winning when they had better chips - Intel got the ship righted with the Core 2 Duo - AMD didn't execute on Barcelona and now the tide is turned to the point that there have been concerns about AMD staying solvent.
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