European regulators on the rampage? Maybe not

Without a doubt, the reverberations of a European court’s decision to uphold stiff remedies for Microsoft’s anticompetitive behavior were felt in more than one legal office in Silicon Valley. The top three candidates? Intel, Google and Apple.

Personally, I think Apple needs to get back to focusing on giving the user the best experience possible - isn’t that what they do best? Not these pathetic lock-in restrictions to ensure share-holder revenue. Restrictions are not required if you are simply better than anyone else…
“Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” - Lord Acton, 1887.

(Via News.com.)

Intel is facing antitrust scrutiny all over the world, and Google is so ubiquitous that it has become a verb. Apple has raised the ire of European regulators for some time with its iTunes/iPod juggernaut.

The Google era is relatively young, and since I don’t cover that area, I’m not going to opine on the effects of the decision to their business. But I have spent a fair amount of time over the last five years writing about Intel and Apple.

Let’s take Intel first. European investigators are all over the company right now, having issued a statement of objections to Intel’s pricing schemes in Europe, which the European Commission believes excludes AMD from fully participating in the European market and ultimately harms consumers. Intel is preparing its answer to that statement of objections, but the EC’s boost of confidence coming off the Microsoft decision could mean that it feels much more confident challenging that answer. The EC can agree with Intel, ask for further explanations, or find its answers unsatisfactory and take action.

As for Apple, the company is currently embroiled in two disputes with European officials. It spent part of its European iPhone tour this week in Brussels meeting with regulators and record labels over the different prices for iTunes songs in different European countries. Regulators in France and Norway have also objected to the fact that songs bought through the iTunes store will only work on iPods.

The argument against Apple would have to come down to this: iPod customers are being egregiously harmed by their inability to purchase music ONLINE from anyone but Apple and have it instantly delivered to their computer. Or, that iTunes customers can only use iTunes songs on iPods, even though if they don’t have an iPod they can acquire the same songs from a variety of different outlets, both brick-and-mortar and online.

Besides, I think Apple’s legal department is worried about more near-term concerns these days.

See original article by Tom Krazit here.