Earlier this month, the European Commission slapped Microsoft with a fine of over $357 million for breaching a 2004 antitrust agreement; the EC further threatened to fine the company up to €3 million a day unless the company came into compliance by July 31, 2006 by providing complete and accurate documentation enabling third parties to interoperate with its server products.
Why, look at the calendar! As of today, Microsoft submitted more than 2,600 new documents to the European Commission in a bid to avoid further fines. According to Microsoft, the documents represent the company’s "ongoing commitment to reaching full compliance with the Commission’s decision of March 2004." For its part, the EC has only said that it has received the files, and that both the EC and the case’s independent monitoring trustee, British professor Neil Barrett, were examining the contents. At a news briefing, EC spokesperson Michael Mann said "It’s too early at this stage to give any indication of whether there will be another payment, another penalty, and if there is to be another penalty, how much it would be."
Microsoft has appealed essentially every finding against it made by the European Commission, including the most recent finding of non-compliance, ensuring that even if the Commission puts its stamp of approval on Microsoft’s most recent documentation delivery, the antitrust process is far from over.
In March, 2004, the European Commission fined Microsoft €497 million for abusing its position in the European market place, particularly in the areas of instance messaging, media players, and server software.
A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server run by the VPN provider. Websites see the VPN server’s IP address instead of yours, and you can get around geo-blocks, censorship, and ISP throttling. The best VPN services are paid, but there are still a handful of free options that do the job well.
Most free VPNs come with a hidden cost, because running servers isn’t cheap and a company that doesn’t charge you has to make its money somewhere else. Many do so by logging your browsing activity and selling it to advertisers, while others flood you with ads and track you across apps.
A stocked computer cache may be convenient for logging into and out of go-to sites in seconds flat, but a major buildup of these tracking codes could significantly impact your PC’s performance. If you’ve noticed that your PC has been running rather slow of late, or you’re using a new browser and don’t know how to clear its cache, we’ve got you covered with the following guide.
If you’re looking to clean up your Gmail inbox, but you don’t want to delete anything permanently, then choosing the archive option is your best bet. Whenever you archive an email, it is removed from your inbox folder while still remaining accessible. Here’s how to access any emails you have archived previously, as well as how to move such messages back to your regular inbox for fast access.