EU To Scrutinize Microsoft’s File Format Support
“Microsoft has declared a new plan that will allow its Office software to save and edit files in a rival format will face a scrutiny by the European Commission.”
Brussels – The European Union antitrust regulators reacted cautiously on Thursday said it would scrutinize a decision by Microsoft to make its Office program compatible with a rival document format.
Microsoft’s announcement last week that it would add support for Open Document Format (ODF) and join in further improvement of the rival document format was highly praised by many critics as a major step forward, but the outcome of those steps will be under review for years to come, observers say.
With the US software giant involved in an antitrust confrontation with Europe’s top antitrust watchdog, the company said that Office would add support to the competing Open Document Format (ODF) from the first half of 2009.
“The commission would welcome any step that Microsoft took toward genuine interoperability, more consumer choice and less vendor lock-in,” the EU’s Competition Commission said in a statement.
“The Commission will investigate whether the announced support of Open Document Format in Office leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice,” the commission said in a statement reported by Dow Jones.
Yesterday, Microsoft said it would add support for ODF and Adobe Systems Inc.’s PDF format to Office 2007 in the first half of 2009, the six-month window for launching Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). The changes will let users open, edit and save those formats — as well as Microsoft’s own XPS (XML Paper Specification) — without adding translators or other extra code. Users will also be able to set ODF, PDF or XPS as Office’s default file format.
The European Commission has long charged Microsoft of misusing its dominant market power by making software that is incompatible with products made by its rivals.
In September, Microsoft lost an appeal before Europe’s second-highest court against a fine of nearly 500 million euros (788 million dollars) that EU regulators slapped on the company in 2004 for abusing its dominant market power.
Announcing the company’s most recent move, Microsoft senior vice president Chris Capossela said: “We are committed to providing Office users with greater choice among document formats and enhanced interoperability.”
EU Competition Commission Neelie Kroes said that the commission was in “close contact” with Microsoft both on a technical level and with its management.
“They are aware what they have to deliver,” Kroes told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in Slovenia.
A Microsoft product manager said in a statement on Wednesday that the company plans to talk about its move with the Commission. “We have ongoing dialogue with the EC, so we will absolutely have a discussion with them about these steps and get whatever feedback they may have on it,” said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft.
For nearly two years, Microsoft has made available translators that let Office work with ODF documents. The company plans to continue to do that for older versions of Office. Support for ODF, along with the Portable Document Format and the XML Paper Specification, will be built into the next version of Office, code named Office 14.
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems, a group of Microsoft rivals including tech giants like IBM, Nokia and Oracle, said Microsoft’s announcement marked “steps in the right direction” but were “not nearly enough.”
“A closer look at their substance suggests that Microsoft is still playing for time to further consolidate its super-dominant position, and that continued anti-trust vigilance will be necessary,” ECIS spokesman Thomas Vinje said.
He described Microsoft’s target of supporting ODF by the first half of 2009 as “pretty underwhelming.”
The group’s managing director, Marino Marcich, put it plainly: “The proof will be whether and when Microsoft’s promised support for ODF is on par with its support for its own format. Governments will be looking for actual results, not promises in press releases.”
“Because Microsoft has a history of broken promises, no one should celebrate this news until we see what is actually done and how quickly it is put in place,” Marcich added.