Great. Word and Excel???

Are dictionary companies and graphic calculator companies complaining now?

Office is like a landfill - it's big, ugly, and difficult to do anything about.

Just a thought: Has Microsoft considered trying to sue or bring to court the EU and its practices? I mean, not giving M$ any excuses mind you, it seems the EU is just looking for ways to sue companies for money no matter the reasoning, and seems they only like to go after Microsoft 99% of the time. I would assume that there is some legal precedant for specifically targeting only one company.

All I am saying is careful with the EU. Once Microsoft is done who will they go after next?

So wait a second, Microsoft is in trouble because their Word & Excel formats aren't open source basically? Isn't that kind of information known commonly as a "trade secret"? My Excel can't import Quickbooks databases, let's sue Intuit next.

HAha WTH EU why don't you just ban Microsoft already come on you basically saying anything Microsoft does = anti trust now? What products are you not going to sue Microsoft over. Is your high piracy rate of Microsoft products telling you it's obviously a monopoly look how people steal their product.

These antitrust charges are quite simply becoming absolutely ridiculous. If I were Microsoft, I'd just pull out of the European Market altogether and stick to the Americas and Asia. Then they'd see how fast they'd be begging for the "monopoly" that Microsoft is again. The average computer user is too stupid to switch over to Linux, and Macs are ever more overpriced there than they are here in the U.S.

I havent looked to confirm this myself, but I think comments for articles like are all also contained in the forums section. You can edit your comment in the forum section.

And just when we thought that EU had gone too far with the IE antitrust lawsuit, they go a step further. I wouldn't like to be a software company right now. You develop your own product and, as soon as it becomes widely used, you get sued for being the only one who offers it. Call me a capitalist, but I think Microsoft have every right to do whatever the hell they want with their software. It's the consumer's choice to use it or not.

And loose even more billions! That's the reason you are not Microsoft!

BTW too much crap cost in EU double the price of what it costs in US!

Well, EU is the one that's making the rules actually. So if you want to play in EU you have to play by its rules. Just as it is in the USA. When you do business in USA you have to consider the US regulations!

Isn't it so?

I do use Open Office exclusively. I'm so confident that I would donate if necessary. I do not miss MS Office at all and I have used MS Word since the 80s and it was always such pain in the... area....

I think the EU should go after Adobe next for the creative suites they sell.

MS should not sell Office in the EU. Split it up and sell each component independently and charge for it... Word $100, Excel $100, Power Point $100, Outlook $100... and don't discount a package because that is why they are in trouble. Let's see if EU customers go up in arms over that.

Like I said, they'd be begging for Microsoft to come back. Microsoft just needs to show them who's "the boss" first.

No offense, but if you find an application like MS Word hard to use then maybe you should get a Mac.

Next the EU is going to take MS to court over Windows being closed source and demand that it be made open source so other companies can steal the code easier! Stupid EU....

So the question is this - should software companies have the right to create saved files that are cannot be used in rival products? There are merits to both sides of the argument.

My personal view: allow proprietary formats but require all products to include an option to open/save in an open or standards format, with the requirement that an open format copy is always saved. Optionally, allow a manufacturer to include with their software and distribute free over the web a conversion tool instead of the built in option.

I feel this would benefit the consumer the most, as well as clearly define who is the owner of the user-generated content within the software. If I write a text in a *.docx format, then later decide I wish to use a different piece of software to continue with writing that text, I (as owner of that content) should have the right to access it via that system.

However, I understand that the developer should have a right to have their own trade secrets in format design. Thus, I should have an standardized open format already saved or a converter. This put the burden on the manufacturer to ensure either that I always have a copy or have a method to get a copy of the content I generated.

The strongest advantages of such a system? Companies can keep their proprietary code, consumers don't have to worry about compatibility of their document with what others use (but for "best viewing" the particular software usage would be encouraged), and consumers wouldn't have to worry that 10 years down the line their old format documents won't be able to be open because the product they used is no longer available on the market.

I thought open office was compatible with MS office? I thought both word and excel could save to different, more open formats? honestly i wouldn't care about this if there weren't companies in the same industry that were 10x worse but aren't being picked on like MS (like say, i dono, APPLE!?).
(also the fact that the cases are laughably poor makes me angry).

and I thought we Australians were bad when it came to tall poppy syndrome.

Now I have to wonder: who's behind all this? The EU must be getting some advice from someone or someone's lawyers. I seriously hope it is not OpenOffice people, because they would just be lowering themselves to the levels of Opera and Google.

I'm not about big business, but EU is just blood-sucking MS just about every app it makes. Will someone then tackle Apple for Safari?

US Government should step in to protect US Company from this bullshit.

Can you really sue a company for not disclosing business critical secrets? Can the EU sue Bosch for not disclosing the inner workings of their ECUs so someone else can make & sell the software to manipulate with it?

The EU does seem to have some sort of specialized interest in something. not only against MS but also against Intel.

It seems that no matter what a company over there cannot have a trade secret or their own software the way they want to give it to the public.

Now if this is true then the EU should also start going after Apple for Mac OSX which is even more closed source than Windows, being it that MAC OSX will not work on a non Apple built PC.

But knowing the EU, they wont go after Apple unless they become big enough to fine a hefty sum to fill their pockets with. Its why they have yet to fine AMD for trying to give their CPUs away for free or even under cost of production which is, in their own laws, anti-competative measures.

But then again Germany has a FAB from AMD and the EU just bought 75K AMD based PCs. So go figure. Next we will hear about the EU outfitting their media and design rooms with Macs.

It just seems that they want the money and don't care about what will happen to the EU people. Windows 7 will not have IE and there will be no "Upgrade" version so the EU consumers will now have to pay full price if they want Windows 7 instead of a much better discounted price. They will also probably have to pay for a web browser just to get a free one like IE or Firefox.

If this goes the same way then the EU people will have a Windows 8 with no WMP, Movie maker, Wordpad, Notepad, Paint or even Calculator. And in all probability no games. Just a blank, firewall free and app free OS probably looking like DOS 6.11.