While the technology community has moved from obsessing over operating systems to focusing on Internet search and digital media government regulators are stuck in the past, wasting taxpayer time and money. A case in point is a group of states, led by California’s Attorney General and former governor Jerry Brown. This week, they told a federal judge that Microsoft’s “market power remains undiminished,” a statement that must make the execs at Google and Apple giggle with glee. For those who see the transition to Web-based services taking off, it’s a total joke.

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The European Union’s second highest court is expected to rule on September 17 whether the European Commission was right in 2004 to find that Microsoft violated antitrust laws, sources familiar with the matter said.

September 17 is the final working day before the retirement of Court of First Instance President Bo Vesterdorf, who is presiding over the landmark case.

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Back in 2002, when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced that the company would be making security a priority, the computing industry responded with a collective, “Finally.” Thomas Greene, writing for the Register, reported at the time that “Bill finally admits that the company has wrongly emphasized whistles and bells over security, and decrees that this shall change.” He went on to say, “Hallelujah. He’s finally arrived on the same page as the rest of the computing world.”

Greene’s analysis would have been more accurate if he had written, “the rest of the computing world except for those who will lose business when consumers’ computing lives become more secure.” But Greene wrote long before McAfee decided to place a full-page advertisement in the Financial Times predicting doom and gloom if Microsoft is allowed to make its own product more secure.

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In the race to provide WiFi access to Internet users, one strategy that looked like a shortcut was to partner with government bodies that seemed inclined to offer a near monopoly to companies who agreed to provide citywide wireless Internet service for “free.” In April of 2006, Google was awarded permission to build such a network in conjunction with Earthlink.

Local governments control the so-called “rights of way” for companies to set up their broadband wireless equipment throughout a city. When a company is awarded the main rights-of-way permissions, one might think that future service provision would be in the bag. In a world where everyone followed the Google motto, “don’t be evil,” that would be the case, but in San Francisco, reality has set in for the search giant.

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Microsoft is planning to launch its new operating system, Windows Vista, in November for corporate clients and in January for consumers. Before launching in Europe, it hopes the EC will explain if there is anything in its software to which the commission seriously objects. Normally, a corporation shouldn’t have to get permission from a government body in order to launch a product, but in this case, Microsoft and the EC have a history that changes the norm.

In March 2004, the EC ruled that in addition to paying a record fine of 497 million euros (US$632 million), Microsoft had to sell a copy of Windows without Media Player software and hand over the specifics of its Windows server technology to rivals. Both these mandates were meant to correct Microsoft’s allegedly harmful market power.

The company appealed the decision, and in July, the commission slapped Microsoft with an additional fine of 280.5 million euros ($356.9 million) for supposedly not complying with its orders. Given this history, it isn’t hard to see why Microsoft would want to know in advance of its next product if the commission has problems with it. Unfortunately for everyone except EC bureaucrats, an answer will not arrive in the near future.

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Noncompliance with a mandate to disclose technology documents is the official reason for the fine, yet the deadline for such compliance has not yet passed. This bizarre situation should serve as a warning to anyone thinking of doing business in Europe, and it should make the Europeans seriously question the legitimacy of their so-called “competition” policy.

In March 2004, the EC ruled that in addition to paying the record 497 million euro fine, Microsoft had to sell a copy of Windows without Media Player software and hand over the specifics of its Windows server technology to rivals. Both these mandates were meant to correct Microsoft’s supposedly harmful market power.

Of course, that supposition is highly suspicious, and the directives are currently under appeal at the European Court of First Instance. Take, for example, the idea of offering consumers a product with less functionality.

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Adobe’s insistence that Microsoft inconvenience and gouge its customers is odd given that PDF is billed as an “open standard” and, according to Adobe’s own Web site, 1,800 vendors including Apple and Sun Microsystems offer the PDF functionality at no cost. One could view Adobe’s actions in this case as a plan to force Microsoft into acting like a monopolist that is unresponsive and expensive. That’s a sticky position for Adobe if it plans to argue that Microsoft is a monopoly.

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They are both American companies, so it might seem pretty strange. That is, until you realize that the Europeans are much more sympathetic to such claims and seem to love to sick it to Microsoft and the Americans who run it. If Adobe really does complain in Europe, that will be a VERY obvious case of forum shopping. This is an unfortunate development for consumers and technology entrepreneurs.

Specifically, Adobe asked Microsoft to remove new PDF functions from Microsoft Office and to charge users for the service if it can be downloaded. Adobe gives the software away for free, and Apple and Open Office along with about 1800 companies, have already implemented the specs. So why can’t Microsoft do it? The argument that their bigness requires different rules just doesn’t hold. Microsoft is NOT a monopoly and is facing huge threats on a number of fronts such as from Google and Yahoo. Anyone who doesn’t realize that needs to wake up and smell the coffee.

Remember the last time MS faced antitrust charges here in the US? Charges of predatory pricing and tying were used and predictions that Internet Explorer (IE) would dominate forever abounded. Only a few short years later, IE has lost ground, being replaced by browsers like Mozilla, Safari, and Opera, and a bunch of others.

Government should not pick winners and losers in the marketplace and Adobe, who once welcomed Microsoft’s entry into the PDF space, would be better off spending its time innovating rather than litigating.

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