M icrosoft must be feeling extremely unloved these days. It has barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief over the sweetheart deal worked out in the USis DoJ anti-trust lawsuit against it. Now the company has to deal with an attack from another direction. The Guardian Unlimited is reporting that a group of software companies is collectively lodging a new lawsuit against Microsoft over its Windows XP operating system. There is currently another lawsuit in the European courts that targets other Microsoft OSes, like NT and Windows 98.
The group bringing the suit is a trade group called Computer and Communications Industry Association. Among its membership is Microsoft competitors like AOL, Sun, Oracle, Intuit, Yahoo!, and a host of other companies that compete less directly with Big Redmond. Notably absent from the list of member companies is Apple.
From the article titled Microsoft under fire on two fronts in Europe:
Microsoft is to be forced to fight its regulatory battles in Europe on two fronts after a powerful coalition of technology companies disclosed yesterday that it had lodged a fresh complaint against the software group with the European commission.
The move, which centres on the firmis XP version of its Windows operating system, comes at a sensitive time for Microsoft.
A separate investigation by the commission into the firmis alleged abuse of its dominant position involving an older version of Windows is expected to be completed in the first half of this year.
In a fresh move yesterday the Washington-based Computer and Communications Industry Association - which represents firms such as Oracle, Sun Microsystems and AOL Time Warner - claimed Microsoft had bundled so many hi-tech products into the XP Windows package that rivals were unable to compete.
"Windows XP takes Microsoftis abusive practices to a new level, illegally protecting Microsoftis existing monopolies and ... illegally eliminating competition in new software and service markets," the CCIA said.
The software is also biased towards Microsoftis products, it was claimed, making life difficult for competing products.
The lawsuit could potentially lighten Microsoftis coffers substantially. According to the article, Microsoft could be fined up to 10 percent of its global profits, more than $30 billion.
Stop by The Guardian Unlimited for the full story.