European regulators are poised to slap huge new fines on Microsoft as Brussels loses its patience with the US software maker for defying a 2004 EU antitrust ruling. Frustrated that Microsoft has flaunted the ruling for more than two years, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes warned last week that new daily fines were all but inevitable.
"I can't imagine another way," Kroes said when quizzed about the issue.
Although the European Commission and regulators in individual member states have agreed on the principle of fresh fines, they were due to take a decision on the sum on Monday.
The fines, which could go as high as two million euros (2.55 million dollars) a day, will be backdated to December 15, and could therefore reach as much as 400 million euros.
However, several sources close to the matter said that the commission could raise the daily fines to as high as 2.5 million euros or three million euros in the future.
Microsoft has already paid dearly for its standoff with the European Commission, which slapped a record fine of 497 million euros on the company in March 2004.
After a five-year investigation, the commission took its biggest competition decision ever in ruling that Microsoft had broken EU law by using a quasi-monopoly in personal computer operating systems to thwart rivals.
In addition to slapping the fine on Microsoft, the EU ordered the company to sell a version of its Windows operating system without its Media Player software and to divulge information about Windows needed by makers of rival products.
Although Microsoft has paid the fine, it has fought tooth-and-nail over the information it is supposed to reveal to competitors.
Irritated that Microsoft has not complied with the ruling, Brussels has threatened to slap daily fines on Microsoft, backdated to December 15 -- its deadline to respect the ruling.
But Microsoft says that it is releasing reams of key computer code needed by programmers of rival products and claims therefore that further fines go too far.
"We have 300 staffers working full time on preparing the necessary documentation" for release, a spokesman for the group said, adding that a "totally revised" package was expected to be ready on July 18.
But Kroes' spokesman, Jonathan Todd, said that "there is nothing unjust" in the commission's decision to slap new fines "because they have had two years" to comply with the 2004 decision.
"The fact that they are providing additional information can help them to avoid future problems and we hope that this new documentation will be sufficient," he said, adding that "that will not be enough to avoid a fine" on Wednesday.
Microsoft claims that if it is not complying with the decision it is because the commission was too vague in the 2004 ruling about what the company needed to do.
The spokesman said that the commission had devoted only "five lines out of the 350 pages of the decision" to explaining what it considered compliance.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's rivals are blase about the prospect of new fines and a source at one of them said "what we want is accurate information" to develop competing products.
He was also dismissive of the company's claims to be on the verge of releasing new information, saying: "We've heard that before and that wasn't true. Why should we believe them now?"
