Maentwrog, Wales – The European Union, which clearly views successful US companies such as Microsoft and Intel as the spawn of the devil, is ganging up with their less-successful rivals to fight the forces of evil.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the European Commission has begun talks with hardware and software companies, including rival browser outfits such as Opera, on ways to force Microsoft to comply with EU rulings and allow more competition on Windows systems.
Microsoft is also on the EU’s naughty step over its alleged recalcitrance to provide interoperability information to developers, who have claimed for years that their lack of success was entirely down to Microsoft’s behavior rather than their own inability to develop products that people want to buy.
The EU’s spittle-flecked hatred for Microsoft and Intel could perhaps make some kind of sense were its rulings designed to support an indigenous IT industry. There is no European IT industry any more and there hasn’t been for years. It’s therefore something of a mystery to this writer what the hell business of the EU it is what US-based companies do.
I live in an admittedly-remote corner of Europe and I regard the EU’s stance as absurd. I can only imagine at the frustration felt and the thousands of heads being banged on desks across the US as companies are forced to comply with ridiculous regulations foisted on them by bureaucrats from thousands of miles away, to pay punitive fines for being successful and to hand over intellectual property to rival companies to enable them to compete without having to invest millions in designing their own damned stuff.
And here’s a question for the EU – isn’t conspiring with Company A in order to give them an advantage against Company B exactly the kind of underhand policy of which you’re accusing Microsoft and Intel? You can’t have it both ways.
Please, just shut the hell up about an industry you know nothing about and concentrate on drawing up regulations to ensure that citizens can’t buy bananas that are too straight, or the wrong shade of yellow. That’s the stuff that really matters, after all.
