COMMENT:Despite fining Microsoft a whopping €899 million yesterday, the EU Commission remains at war and holed up in the jungle. It's time to move on, writes Pat Cox
IN 1974 he emerged from the jungle on a remote island in the Philippines. Though the island he defended was captured by the allies in early 1945, Second Lieut Hiroo Onoda refused to surrender.
He dismissed every attempt to convince him that the war was over as a trick. He could neither believe nor accept that he had wasted 29 years of his life in his single-minded pursuit of an objective that had long since been rendered redundant by circumstance and the passage of time.
The battles between the European Commission and Microsoft and their surrounding controversies remarkably have lasted more than twice as long as the first World War, much longer than the second World War and, in the course of this year, will have endured for as long as both world wars combined.
Admittedly it still is a far cry from the three decades in the wilderness of the hapless Lieut Onoda but nevertheless is sufficiently long to make one question what purpose ultimately is served by a long war of attrition.
The first shots were fired with the lodging of an initial complaint by one of Microsoft's main commercial competitors, Sun Microsystems, in 1998. Then the European Union was led by the Santer commission, followed by the Prodi commission and now the Barroso commission, itself within sight of the end of its mandate.
1998 is not only another time but is also another place with regard to the subsequent evolution of information and communications technology. Then there were no Googles, no Facebooks, no iPods. In such a rapidly developing sector, one wonders about the sense of fighting a long war whose genesis lies in such different times and circumstances.
Nevertheless, the tide of victory has been in the commission's favour.
It adopted a decision against Microsoft in 2004 and imposed not only a huge fine but also demanded unprecedented remedies involving the redesign of some of Microsoft's most popular products and the licensing of its technology to competitors.
It was on September 17th last, when the European Court of First Instance upheld the commission's decision almost in its entirety, that the decisive extent of the latter's victory over Microsoft truly could be perceived.
Accepting the court's ruling, by not mounting an appeal and taking steps to ensure compliance with the decision, the company signalled its willingness to rapidly come into alignment with the commission.
In response to yesterday's announcement of an €899 million fine for past non-compliance, the biggest fine in EC antitrust history, the company confirmed that it was "trying to focus on steps that will improve things for the future".
Indeed, Microsoft announced last week that it would take a significant step further by extending unilaterally the remedies that the commission originally had imposed to cover a wide range of applications and products.
This move guarantees software developers unprecedented access to the secrets behind Microsoft's software without either securing licences or paying fees and will facilitate far greater interoperability of all products on the market.
What is proposed is not just a business first but is in many respects also an industry breakthrough, a paradigm shift led by a radical change in Microsoft's business model.
It offers new opportunities to consumers and a unilateral commitment to the software industry which deserves to be acknowledged and indeed hopefully will be followed by similar peer group initiatives.
It has taken a long time but this increased Microsoft self-awareness of its responsibilities to the market and to consumers should be no less welcome for that.
Perhaps the time has come to emerge from the dense undergrowth of this complex saga and to cut a clearance through its jungle of detail, to find a fresh perspective and the light of a new day.
Lieut Onoda responded when called upon to do his duty. He fought the fight.
His misfortune lay not in the fulfilment of his duty but rather in his failure to realise when the war had ended.
Of course, there will always be ghosts and demons ready to spur on a futile quest, but a good soldier must not surrender his reasoning to these menaces.
Lieut Onoda's nemesis was that he remained singularly fixated while in the meantime the world had moved on. Europe must not make the same mistake.
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Pat Cox is the former president of the European Parliament. He advises Microsoft, among other companies, on EU-US relations
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