PIN-SME announces its support for the EU’s Case concerning Microsoft Tying Practices in the Browser Market“We became an intervenor as a result of our members’ particular vulnerability arising from the very tight cost restrictions under which SMEs operate as developers, content providers and users,” Sebastiano Toffaletti, PIN-SME Secretary General said in a statement. “I would like to stress that many of our members work and will, we trust, continue to work with Microsoft as content developers and users of Internet Explorer, but we believe that the tying practices involved in this case are detrimental to our innovation potential and future competitiveness. We want this de facto IE lock-in to end, especially as the European Court of First Instance has already condemned similar tying practices,” he added.
Browsers act as the gatekeeper to the Internet, which has become the backbone of economic activity and which has moved from mostly text-based web pages to applications where music, video, photo editing, document creation, data storage, gaming, email and other activities can be carried out online with the browser. With the advent of cloud computing, browsers will play an ever more important access role.
Of particular concern for PIN-SME is that tying practices prevent SMEs, whether as users, developers or content providers, from benefiting from the full potential of cloud computing to lower licensing costs or promote functionality across competing operating systems. For developers and content providers, cloud computing represents a vast potential to compete on a more equal footing with traditional software vendors and developers.
PIN-SME requested third-party status following the Commission’s 15 January Statement of Objections (SO) against Microsoft, which argued that Microsoft was abusing its dominant position by tying its IE browser to Windows. The SO resulted from a complaint filed in December 2007 by Opera, the Norwegian browser developer.
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