European Union regulators are still waiting for details from Microsoft on an offer to reveal secret computer code to meet an EU anti-trust ruling, competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said on Tuesday.
“We have not yet received full details from Microsoft. When we do, we will review the information carefully,” she told the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee.
The United States software giant announced last week with much fanfare that it would license the source-code code for its near ubiquitous Windows operating system in hope of finally laying to rest EU regulators’ concerns that is not doing enough to comply with a 2004 antitrust ruling.
The EU competition watchdog fined the software group in March 2004 a record €497-million ($588-million) for abusing its dominant market position.
It also ordered Microsoft to market a version of its Windows operating system unbundled from its Media Player software and to divulge information about its operating system needed by manufacturers of rival products.
The EU executive, increasingly impatient for evidence of compliance, turned up the heat in December by threatening to slap a daily fine of up to two million euros ($2,37-million).
Microsoft hoped that offering to reveal Windows source code would satisfy the European Commission, but Brussels has since said that it is the “quality of the information that counts and not the quantity”. – AFP