Thread: EU & US Vs. Microsoft

I was just saying in another thread about the EU rulings on Microsoft, and the fact that MS has been forced (pretty much kicking and screaming) to open up a lot of their specification and implementation data for a variety of MS products, so third party products can talk to them properly

Specifically,

- details on the OOXML file format (Office 2007), so other office suites can read & write to the MS proprietary format

- the Windows server protocols (exchange / active directory / SMB etc.) so Linux clients can properly utilise services provided by Windows servers, and Windows clients can gain the same "functionality" out of Linux servers serving services via Windows protocols

Additionally,
the ongoing US anti-trust case
(which seems to be, at long last, growing some balls and actually doing something other than "monitoring" - maybe as a result of their EU counterparts being so active)
has requested that Windows 7 (the next version of Windows, after Vista) be made available to them for review - which they have now got
- sources here and here

and I was just wondering how all this is affecting MS
the big picture, so to speak

Not to mention the rather desperate-looking scrabble for Yahoo that MS is currently engaged in

MS's total assets (how much money they actually have + amount borrowed + any tied up in long-term investments) sits at US$67.34 billion
while their net tangible assets (actual physical assets - cash, property, accounts receivable, etc.) equate to US$22.41 billion

(both as at end of last year)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=MSFT

The EU has fined MS twice (so far) for breaching anti-trust regulations
total fines to date are €1.68 billion (US$2.57 billion)

That's a fine equalling 10% of their tangible assets

The EU has a further 2 anti-trust cases in the running, which are yet to be decided.

As I said above, the US anti-trust panel seem to have woken up
(after years of sitting around "monitoring")

I'm not really a financial / business expert
(in fact, far from it)
but this looks (to me) to be pretty serious for MS