daily EU fine for MS?

Published: 22 December 2005

Hoo hoo hoo!: “The European Commission has threatened to fine Microsoft up to 2m euros (£1.36m; $2.4m) a day until it gives rivals more access to its systems.“

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One Comment

  1. grouch
    Posted 22 December 2005 at 12:54 PM | Permalink

    Don’t get too excited. Taking the U.S. definition of “billion” and MS’s cash reserve of $65 billion (last time I read about it):

    echo “scale=2; 65000/2.4″ | bc
    27083.33 (days)

    Let’s imagine MS has that cash in some very modest bank account, drawing a simple 2% per year, and let’s ignore any growth of the original $65 billion. Interest will be $1300 million per year, or $3.5 million per day.

    The penalty looks a bit puny, now, doesn’t it? Having a global, lucrative monopoly that has been maintained by illegal means for many years without any significant impedance from any government gives one a comfortable cushion against further slaps on the wrist by mere governments.

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