What a remarkable coincidence: just days after Microsoft announced its whole strategy was going to be "interoperability, interoperability, interoperability", it gets smacked with a $1.4bn fine for ... interoperability breaches.
It seems remarkable that Microsoft's record EU fine came just days after its trumpeting a new commitment to interoperability. But the reality is that Microsoft is no stranger to this kind of "coincidence".
Just a week ago, Microsoft announced that it was going to open up as it had never opened up before, spreading APIs and product information like melted butter on hot toast. At the time, it looked rather like Redmond's latest attempt to quash open source rivals. This week, another motivation has become crystal-clear: keeping European regulators and a $1.4billion fine off its back.
It has been known since October that Microsoft would face fines for initially failing to comply with 2004 European Union (EU) directives requiring it to unbundle Windows Media Player and make information on how to work with that product more readily available.
Microsoft eventually met with those requirements, but was tardy enough about it, and charged competitors such incredibly large amounts to access the required doucmentation that it incurred the wrath of the EU, which has a much tougher approach than similar regulatory organisations around the world.
(In truth, Europe also represents a big enough market that Microsoft has to take threats from the regulator seriously. We're not sure that a similar case bought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission would cause quite the same stir at MS headquarters, though the ACCC's ongoing case against Google suggests that it isn't scared of big tech targets.)
The eventual fine - 899 million Euros, or around $US1.4 billion - wasn't quite the highest possible figure (indeed, it was just over half the potential maximum). That said, it is still the biggest-ever penalty against a single business in EU history.
Microsoft can pay it readily enough from its cash reserves, but it's a whopping great pile of money that is unlikely to make investors happy. Perhaps Steve Ballmer can raise additional funds by hiring himself out to do the Monkey Boy dance at private parties.
We don't know, as Microsoft has not had too much to say on the subject. It's telling that while an entire 'virtual pressroom' was created for the interoperability strategy announcement, Microsoft's statement acknowledging the EU fine isn't anywhere on its official press information site. Feel the spin!
Clearly, Microsoft would rather have everyone focus on its future product plans rather than the punishment (though there's clearly no way to keep a billion dollar fine off the news). This is quite consistent with its corporate behaviour when faced with this kind of problem: changing plans is inevitable, but acknowledgement is minimal.
For instance, one of the focal points of the interoperability plan is allowing developers to alter Office products such as Word and Excel so they can natively use a format other than Microsoft's preferred Office OpenXML. When Office 2007 was launched, the company line was that the only concession needed was its own option to change the default file format for saving, so once again there's been a shift when no-one was looking.
What's changed in the meantime? Well, the most obvious development is IBM's launch of the ODF-based Symphony suite in late 2007. Both IBM and Sun are now offering corporate support for rival suites that promise completely open and public document formats, so Microsoft was finding it harder to present itself as the desktop suite good guy. With reasons to upgrade to Office 2007 thin on the ground, a more open file approach couldn't hurt.
An added bonus is that the EU also has an ongoing investigation into whether or not Office plays nice with other systems. At least this time Microsoft can claim to have planned the changes before the fines started piling up.
It's been a lousy week for Microsoft: at a time when it wants attention focused on the long-planned launch of Windows 2008, it's getting nothing but negative headlines. As well as the mega-fine, it's had outages on Windows Live and numerous problems with Vista SP1 to contend with. While that negative coverage can be interpreted as a consequence of massive success -- everyone is interested in Microsoft because everyone uses its products -- the company could benefit from being more truly open about its problems and plans. Those who store the past in a proprietary format on the hard drive of history are condemned to repeat it.