A Partial Victory

"It's a victory for the customer and the free market," the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote of the Microsoft court decision, while conceding that "some of the effects of the Microsoft expansion cannot be reversed.

"The EU decision will ensure greater competition, which the customers can only benefit from," the paper continued. "As we read in economics textbooks, monopolies lead to expensive goods and bad service."

The Microsoft conflict is the most important case the EU has been through, wrote Oslo's Aftenpost: "It is comparable to the trial where US oil magnate John D. Rockefeller was forced to break up the Standard Oil Company nearly a hundred years ago.

"The current trial is essential to the credibility and penetrating power of the EU court. Thanks to the EU, small and mid-sized software companies around the world have won a decisive partial victory for more competition on the computer systems market."

The Financial Times Deutschland, writing from Hamburg, agreed that "yesterday's decision significantly bolsters the [European] Commission now in ensuring competition," though the Commission's reputation had been damaged by unsuccessful merger bans over the course of the nine-year conflict, the paper noted.

"Despite protection from Brussels, Microsoft's competitors will still have a hard time standing up to the sector's giants in the future," added the paper.

Commission under fire

Other news sources were more critical of the way the EU Commission handled the case.

"The Commission overstepped its authority and showed that the conflict had become extremely emotional," wrote Der Standard from Vienna. "The European Commission is supposed to ensure competition. How the market shares then develop should be left to the consumers and the companies."

Der Bund in Bern commented that "it's problematic that the case took so long and may not even be closed yet. While highly paid lawyers on both sides are having it out, technology is developing at a rapid pace.

"Despite the newest regulations from Luxembourg, it will be difficult in the next case to find a balance between consumers' interest in competition and the equally justifiable protection of a market-dominating company's innovation and intellectual capital," concluded the Swiss paper.