"​Showdown in Seoul looms for ​Microsoft&q​uot;

"The antitrust regulator in South Korea will begin a crucial hearing on Tuesday to determine whether Microsoft violated the country's fair trade rules by bundling its instant messenger and Media Player programs into its Windows XP platform."

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Erisan wrote:

"The antitrust regulator in South Korea will begin a crucial hearing on Tuesday to determine whether Microsoft violated the country's fair trade rules by bundling its instant messenger and Media Player programs into its Windows XP platform."

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Why doesnt Microsoft just unbundle, Media Player, MSN Messenger and Internet Explorer and offer them on a seperate disk in the retail package?

rjdohnert wrote:

Erisan wrote:"The antitrust regulator in South Korea will begin a crucial hearing on Tuesday to determine whether Microsoft violated the country's fair trade rules by bundling its instant messenger and Media Player programs into its Windows XP platform." Article

Why doesnt Microsoft just unbundle, Media Player, MSN Messenger and Internet Explorer and offer them on a seperate disk in the retail package?

Because customers would (rightfully) complain about having to do extra work to install this stuff, while it wouldn't really address any of the reasons why people think bundling is predatory.

That said, the folks against bundling are morons.  Plain and simple.  Should MS unbundle notepad?  There's other text editors out there, and I'm sure notepad is eating into the possible revenue of those vendors.  What about Paint?  Solitaire?  Explorer (assuming the unbundling of IE wouldn't eliminate this aspect as well)?  And doesn't every single OS bundle these sort of applications (and others)?  Would an OS be useful with out them?  Why aren't people up in arms that Mac OS/X comes with Safari?

Erisan wrote:

"The antitrust regulator in South Korea will begin a crucial hearing on Tuesday to determine whether Microsoft violated the country's fair trade rules by bundling its instant messenger and Media Player programs into its Windows XP platform."

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I find this sort of action against Microsoft by the South Korea government to be hypocritical considering that most of the major businesses in South Korea thrive on business practices that could hardly be called "fair."

This is politics, and most of you, judging from the tone of your posts, have no f---ing clue how business works in Korea.

Orbit86 wrote:

"  Why aren't people up in arms that Mac OS/X comes with Safari?"

because Microsoft is a monopoly and Apple is not..there isnt a market for notepad..you have notepad and wordpad

ROFLMAO.  I love this argument as well.  Just because they are the market leader doesn't mean they have a monopoly.  And though I'm all for regulating monopolies, treating them different under the law isn't the right solution and doesn't make a lot of sense.

Beer28 wrote:

If they really think it's that bad, they should pass a law putting huge tariffs on windows, and give tax breaks to companies that make linux distributions.(and perhaps even Steve Jobs's company)

That would even things out. The EU should do the same thing. They have mandriva, SuSE, ect...

Punishing microsoft is only a token gesture.

Putting huge tarriffs on Windows is not what I'd call fair. It's giving one company a deliberate disadvantage in the market place and trying to force the consumer to make a choice based on financial reasons instead of good software.

Beer28 wrote:

If they really think it's that bad, they should pass a law putting huge tariffs on windows, and give tax breaks to companies that make linux distributions.(and perhaps even Steve Jobs's company)

That would even things out. The EU should do the same thing. They have mandriva, SuSE, ect...

Punishing microsoft is only a token gesture.

Ha Ha Ha. Very funny.

This post was written by a troll part of you, wasn't it?
You want to make Windows much more expensive because you want to FORCE (again FORCE) people to use YOUR Linux; then there won't be a choice. This claim (again) confirms your zealotry.