In 2002 Microsoft chairperson Bill Gates stood on stage at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, home to the Academy Awards, and pronounced this ”the digital decade”.
By 2010, Gates told an audience, which included director James Cameron and musician LL Cool J, everything from paying bills to seeing movies ”will be done on a digital basis, and the PC, with its magic software, will play the central role”.
He then proceeded to unveil a half-billion-dollar upgrade to the Windows Media Player for music, movies and other digital content. Eighteen months later, Gates’s endeavour could be facing a roadblock.
If Microsoft cannot settle an anti-trust case brought by European Union regulators, the company may be ordered to remove Windows Media Player as an integrated feature of the dominant Windows operating system, at least for PCs sold in Europe.
The EU could also order Microsoft to provide rival media players with Windows with sufficient information to enable them to make their products as easy for users to access as Microsoft’s own music and video player.
According to Inside Digital Media analyst Phil Leigh, removing the media player from Windows may help level the playing field for competitors such as RealNetworks’s RealOne player and Apple’s QuickTime, while also costing Microsoft its default advantage.
In the fierce competition for this kind of technology, Microsoft’s primary weapon is its ability to ensure its format is found on millions of PCs every year, says Rob Helm, director of research for independent analysts Directions on Microsoft. Now, he says, ”the EU could throw a wrench in that”.
A negative ruling also could weigh on Microsoft’s planned next version of Windows. That system, which may not be available until 2006 or later, is scheduled to incorporate features that could compete with Google, Yahoo and other companies.
Legal battles over such features might become more likely if the EU forbade Microsoft from tying its media player to its operating system, Helm says. — Sapa-AP