Microsoft, monopolist, remains on probation

CONVICTED monopolist Microsoft has lost its battle to prevent its US probation from being extended.

For those who came in late, the Vole lost a huge anti-trust battle in the US a few years back and had to be monitored by the Department of Justice to ensure it did not re-offend and obeyed settlements forced on it by the courts.

The probation period was set to expire but the State governments who bought the original case said they did not want to let the Vole off the hook yet.

Now, according to AP, the robed, but not wigged one, judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has agreed with them and decided to extend Vole's probation period until November 2009.

She said that the court's ruling "should not be viewed as a sanction against Microsoft" but said that the reason was because Microsoft had been a bit slow in filing technical documents related to the licensing of its software.

Microsoft will not get away so lightly in the EU, where regulators are miffed that the Vole has been mucking them around from day one.

More here. µ