Microsoft was fined around 1 percent of their global sales for a violation of the terms of a kind of a settlement in an old competition case (antitrust case). Microsoft already knew that if they violated the terms they would be fined up to 10 percent of their global revenues: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-1941_en.htm?local...
Microsoft mostly complied with the terms of the settlement, but not entirely as the OP describes. In that light the 1 percent fine is probably not way off.
If a someone in a corporation is actually committing a crime , then, yes they can go to jail.
If they have committed some kind of civil offense or if it's a criminal offense with no jail term attached then they don't go to jail. There's nothing special about corporations that prevent the people in charge from serving jail time.
Decisions -- where they are rational -- become a cost/benefit analysis. If you really want to deter the behavior, the costs have to outweigh the benefits. (Perhaps significantly enough to outweigh various arguments about what the true costs and benefits might be.)
And... this still says nothing about the damage that may have been caused to victims, and compensation for same. (For example, take someone's health away in certain fashions, and no amount of money can replace it.)
Not even close. It's in a majority position but nowhere near a monopoly.
Although it can probably be considered to be a "dominant position", but then come the next part:
1. Has somebody complained
2. Is "Android" using its dominant position to distort the market
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-raises-market-share-to-5...
The highly competitive marketplace for mobile devices gives you as a consumer a wide variety of choices of operating system, and each operating system (apart iOS) is adjusted by the operator to best fit their idea of market
You can choose devices, you can choose different versions and setups of android. There is a competive market
The fact that its not free as in speech is not the problem (it should be but)
There's nothing wrong with having a monopoly. What is, however, illegal is to abuse your monopoly to keep and extend your monopoly to other domains.
Btw Google / Android isn't near anywhere a monopoly in the smartphone / tablet market.
What would be illegal would be, for example, Google using its search engine to eliminate any mention of the word "Apple" and of the "apple.com" domain or, worse, only allowing access to negative criticism of Apple products. But they aren't doing that (at least not that we know of).
On the contrary MS has been officially judged has being a monopolist abusing its power to try to keep and extend its monopoly. Both in an US judgement and in an European judgement.
Heck, even selling the Xbox at a loss for years and years while living on monopoly money is a dubious way to enter a market (but personally I wouldn't mind if MS faded into irrelevancy and had only its Xbox division doing fine ; )
Why? Because IE was a default browser, all the OS have a default browser. Microsoft didn't prohibited anybody from installing another browser.
If we consider that a monopoly and something punishable, then Android + Chrome is another monopoly. In EU, Android has over 61% market share [1]. And every Android comes with its default browser. And as your parent said, I don't see any ballot screen telling me to choose an alternative browser, but Google doesn't keep you from installing other browsers. Is the exact same situation.
[1] http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-raises-market-share-to-5...
> At the same time, Compaq removed the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop of its Presarios and replaced it with a single icon [for Navigator]
>When Microsoft learned of Compaq's plans for the Presario, it informed Compaq that it considered the removal of the MSN and Internet Explorer icons to be a violation of the OPK process by which Compaq had previously agreed to abide. [...] Finally, after months of unsuccessful importunity, Microsoft sent Compaq a letter on May 31, 1996, stating its intention to terminate Compaq's license for Windows 95 if Compaq did not restore the MSN and Internet Explorer icons to their original positions. Compaq's executives opined that their firm could not continue in business for long without a license for Windows, so in June Compaq restored the MSN and IE icons to the Presario desktop.
Android is — at best — in a dominant position, but Android also isn't a monolithic entity.
Then comes the second problem: ignoring the non-monolithic nature of Android where e.g. Samsung and HTC — while all using the same base system — compete with one another) being a natural monopoly (or even in a dominant position) is not illegal, abusing such a position to distort other markets is.
If you are an EU citizen and can make such a case, you should feel free to bring it up to EU competition courts. But you have to make the case first.
It's very simple: citizens go to jail, companies can't; so we have to make them pay, a lot. When fines are a fixed amount, the corporations have to simply earn more by committing the crime than they would have to pay if caught; banks are very adept at playing this game.