Valentin's Blog

As you probably know, a few weeks ago the Anti-Trust ruling of the European Commission against Microsoft was upheld by the European Court of First Instance.  On this occasion the Economist* made some interesting remarks that detail the possible future impact of this ruling on Google and open data:

[...] it largely endorsed the commission's legal reasoning. It argued, for instance, that withholding information that is needed for PCs and servers to work together constitutes and abuse of a dominant position if it keeps others from developing rival software for which there is potential consumer demand. In such cases, the information cannot be refused even if it is protected by intellectual property rights, as Microsoft had argued.

And if Google becomes a central storage vault for data such as users' location and identity, as some fear, European regulators may one day try to compel the firm to give rivals open access to this information - rather as they have now forced Microsoft to release its communication protocols.

*: Issue 38, September 22nd - 28th, sadly not freely available online.

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