Instead, Microsoft has agreed to give customers a choice of up to eleven competitive browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. OEMs will also be able to choose other browsers to install on their Windows PCs before shipping.

European consumers who already have Windows operating systems will be sent a software update by mid-March that will allow them to easily switch browsers. Going forward until 2015, new Windows buyers will be presented with the choice automatically. Since PC owners ostensibly have access to IE alternatives already anyway, all Microsoft is being forced to do is essentially to remind them of their options. It seems like a fair enough system, which makes it even more surprising that it took billions of dollars of fines to get here. [NY Times]

Datel maintains that Microsoft is "disabling or erecting technological barriers to Datel accessories" and thereby favoring its own products. For reference, Microsoft's 512MB memory unit is about $30, while a 2GB version from Datel is $40. Sounds like it might be worth supporting the little guy in this one. [Techflash]

Sorry about the previous typo, it's 512MB for $30 on the Microsoft memory unit, not 12MB.

Here's how Intel describes the settlement:

Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices today announced a comprehensive agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes between the companies, including antitrust litigation and patent cross license disputes.

So, they're not fighting directly anymore, and the mountains of patent and antitrust disputes are resolved: Intel will pay this ridiculously large sum of money to AMD, and agree to not engage in anything even resembling monopolistic behavior, and both companies will live in harmony, cross-licensing technologies and competing, but softly! Great. Well, sort of: Intel's biggest problems right now don't come from other companies, but from governments: complaints from AMD no doubt helped spur investigations by the European Commission and New York Attorney General into Intel's business practices, and as part of the agreement AMD is withdrawing their complaints with both agencies, but the EC issued their $1bn+ fine quite a while ago, and from the looks of it, the AG's office is eager to move forward with their investigation too. In other words, this probably isn't the end of the pain for Intel.

That, kids, is why you don't engage in anticompetetive practices in a two-company industry. [WSJ Law Blog]

From the looks of it, this case will mirror the European Commission's case almost exactly:

"Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market," Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. "Intel's actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices."

The AG even echoes some of the same cases used in the EC's investigation, like the time Intel allegedly paid $130 million to keep IBM from selling AMD-based servers, which IBM execs considered as much a business deal as a way to avoid incurring the "wrath of Intel." I too avoid the wrath of Intel, by using AMD chips. Bam! Also: no. But still, dick move!

Cuomo is working with the same body of evidence that the European Commission was, and probably quite a bit more—the FTC's been breathing down their necks for over a year now—so I'd expect this to get pretty uncomfortable for Intel. And by uncomfortable, of course, I mean very, very expensive. [NYT]

Schmidt's presence the Apple board of directors has been conceptually weird from the start, but in the last year or so, he's been treading in dangerous territory. Many saw these concerns crystallize when the FTC invoked a century-old antitrust law that prohibits "interlocking directorates"—essentially, the sharing of leadership between two competing companies to investigate the companies after Google announced Chrome OS (an investigation which is still moving forward, despite Schmidt's exit). The NYT, discussing the issue in May:

Antitrust experts say that investigations of interlocking directorates rarely lead to major confrontations between companies and the government. Executives typically choose to resign from the board of a competitor if it poses a problem rather than face a lengthy investigation or a bruising legal fight.

The thing is, until just now, Eric Schmidt didn't step down, nor did he seriously talk about it. He didn't feel he had to, because of a disingenuous loophole:

Under the Clayton Act, interlocking directorates are not considered a problem if the revenue from products in which the companies compete is less than 2 percent of either company's sales.

Google's competing services are generally free, including Android and the upcoming Chrome OS, and therefore don't directly account for much—or depending on how stubbornly literal you want to be about it—any of the company's revenue. This should have be a clear cue to step the hell aside, but it wasn't taken that way. Schmidt was comfortable staying, and wasn't afraid to say so as early as last week.

In an interview printed in the Mercury News on Friday, Schmidt said "the board question can be solved by recusing yourself, which I do with the iPhone," hardly talking like a guy who was about to walk away. He was comfortable with this relationship; the regulatory bodies, the public and, most importantly, Apple, were not. It's hard to imagine Steve Jobs, or Apple's various board members, taking kindly to the consistent surprises they were getting from Google. As they saw it, the iPhone begot Android, Safari begot Chrome, and in a small way, OS X begot Chrome OS. Steve Jobs didn't waste any words in their press release on Schmidt's departure, and made these concerns pretty clear:

Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple's core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric's effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished.

Chrome OS was announced in May, and Android in November of 2007. To Jobs and Apple, Schmidt's overlapping interests were old news; to Schmidt, it's safe to assume they were ancient history.

The Google/Apple relationship has been steadily getting more awkward since people first started talking about it, and at a fast clip since Schmidt's been onboard. The relationship was unnecessarily strained as it was, but now Schmidt's company is giving Apple some serious headaches, all the while looking like the innocent party in a confusing PR nightmare that's drawn the wrath of the FCC. Granted, they deserve it, but having a Google CEO to step over only muddles the issues. It bears repeating: nothing good could've come from Schmidt staying. He'd either be accused of collusion, sabotage or both—his presence was a lose-lose proposition. He didn't seem to mind, but it looks like Apple finally did.

Drawing a thicker line between these corporate structures is good for everyone, no matter how this plays out. If Apple and Google turn into direct rivals, they need distinct management. If they want to continue working together, like they do on browsers, iPhone software, or some as-of-yet-unannounced project—Apple could sure as hell use Google's help with their cloud efforts, for example—they need the exact same thing.

Aside from the large EU flag flying on its front page, AMD also includes an extensive amount of information on the ruling with a page entitled "Break Free." That page includes anti-Intel sentiment from various respectable news organizations. All we can say to that is, where's the love? Here, AMD, I've got a quote all packaged up for you from our own John Herrman:

Ok, that [Intel's suspected antitrust violation] does sound pretty bad.

Bam! [via CNET]

EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said Intel had pursued a strategy aimed mainly at excluding A.M.D. by paying computer makers and retailers to postpone, cancel or avoid A.M.D. products entirely.

Ok, that does sound pretty bad. [NYT—Thanks, Mikael!]

The biggest issue here seems to be that Apple and Google share two directors, in this case Eric E. Schmidt and Arthur Levinson. Both Schmidt and Levinson sit on the boards of the two companies, and a 1941 law prohibits such a relationship when it could reduce natural inter-company competition. The proper term for this is "interlocking directorates."

Google and Apple, of course, compete in several categories: Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari web browsers, Android and Mac OS, YouTube and iTunes, Picasa and iPhoto, and many, many more. Yet the companies' fates are intertwined, and our faithful government watchdogs want to make sure nothing untoward is happening in the union. We'll keep you updated if anything interesting develops out of the investigation. [New York Times]

A proposal has already been drafted, challenging carriers who disallow VoIP traffic over their 3G networks. Deconstructed, this kind of selective connection seems fundamentally wrong: these carriers are choosing to block certain data not for traffic management reasons, but to sabotage competing services. But the sheer magnitude of the competitive threat—the possibility that VoIP over cellular data could completely destroy conventional voice services—at least explains why companies do this, and why regulatory bodies have been so reluctant to touch the issue.

At this stage, it's a distant issue for US carriers, much less cell users. But an EU/Trade Commission intervention into the European wireless industry could at least remind US regulators that, yes, filtering wireless data for anticompetitive purposes is actually kind of a dick move. [Handelsblatt via TGDaily]

The case is still being reviewed in the appeals court, and President Obama is still eligible to make a decision on the case, but for now, Vizio has to pay a bond of $2.50 per TV to keep importing and selling units. [Bloomberg via Engadget]

According to Google's Sundar Pichai, vice president for product management:

Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users. This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft's dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers.

I bet the Firefox and Apple browser teams, currently with 21.5 and 8.3 percent of the market, don't give this a lot of thinking. Does Google-with only 1 percent of the market-think that Microsoft should not include Internet Explorer in their operating system? Maybe they want them to include Chrome as well? Should Google include MSN Search and Yahoo in their Android cellphones too? [NYT-illustration by EricWdesigns]

"For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem," said Christine A. Varney, Obama's pick to head the U.S. government's antitrust division (ouch!). To which I say, has she seen those cute new Windows "I'm a PC" ads with the toddlers? If anything, Microsoft is adorable these days.

"[The U.S. economy will] continually see a problem — potentially with Google [because it already] has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising," she said.

The comments were made all the way back in June during a panel discussion sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute, but we're only hearing of them now, most likely because Varney is set to be confirmed by the Senate very soon.

But even as Varney was stretching her legs with lofty antitrust rhetoric last year, she was also praising the Google for being a "spectacular innovator" that dominated the industry with "terrific work" and that obtained its monopoly through lawful business practice. They were the kind of comments that inevitably set up a "but..." statement, and lo and behold, here it is:

"[Google is] quickly gathering market power in what I would call an online computing environment in the clouds. When all our enterprises move to computing in the clouds and there is a single firm that is offering a comprehensive solution, you are going to see the same repeat of Microsoft," she said.

Related to all this is an article I keep thinking about as I learn more about the all-but-confirmed legal onslaught that's growing larger in Google's HUD. In Wired's current 3mm thin issue, there's an article called "The Plot to Kill Google," which starts off with Google lawyers preparing to enter the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust wing, of all places. The discussion was about, wait for it, online advertising. This time with Yahoo. The Wired story took place in October, so the legal wrangling has actually already begun.

Google, for its part, has already started preparing a defense. Bloomberg reports Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in an email response that stiff competition "is literally one click away" on the Internet. Customers are also free to search the internet using any engine they wish, he said, and nothing Google does prevents that from happening. "Cloud computing is really in its infancy," he said. "There's going to be rich competition in that space for a long time to come."

My personal thought on all this? It's what happens when your sea floor mapping platform discovers Atlantis. [Bloomberg via ComputerWorld]

According to court papers filed on Psystar's behalf:

Apple is prohibited from bringing action against Psystar for the alleged infringement of one or more of the plaintiff's copyrights for failure to register said copyrights with the copyright office as required.

Not possessing having registered a copyright for the OS would make it kind of hard to enforce one, and would undermine Apple's entire suit suit.

I'm no lawyer, so I'll leave the copyright discussion to someone who knows better. But you really can't ignore the timing and circumstances of this development. Following a few notable failures in court, Psystar appears to be losing their fight against Apple, at least as long as it's framed as a copyright issue. Changing the terms, it seems, is their only option, and reeks of desperation. Not to mention the fact that it was utterly predictable. In our last Psystar update, posted before any of this happened, commenter Tim Faulkner said:

What people are ignoring is that Apple's already won. Even if Psystar can argue they have a legal right to hack Mac OS, they can't demonstrate that they have any right to distribute Apple's copyright without Apple's consent unless the antitrust claims (which they've abandoned) had merit. Even if Psystar has a right to circumvent Apple's weak protection (highly questionable), how are they going to prove they have a right to distribute Mac OS? They can't, that's impossible.

To which redwingsmonk added:

I think the only way psystar could win this if they claim OSX was open source and they have free reign to modify the code and resell it.

And here we are. It looks like Psystar—who is now apparently taking legal advice from anonymous Gizmodo commenters—knew that challenging Apple's copyright was pretty much their only hope. A faint hope, it's safe to say. [InformationWeek via AppleInsider]

"Ignoring fundamental principles of antitrust law, and the realities of the marketplace, Psystar contends that Apple has unlawfully monopolized an alleged market that consists of only one product, the Macintosh® computer."

It's doubtful that Psystar has the grounds to win or even the money to fight this case, but the stated principle here is kind of weird. The whole line of Macintosh computers is one product? Hardware that could run Mac OS comprises an "alleged market?" It's hard to quite make sense of what they mean other than "PLEASE DIE." We'll see what happens in court on November 3rd, when Apple passes that sentiment on to Psystar's face(s). [The Register, with full filing at ZDNet]

According to the deal's terms, developers can pay a one-time fee of 10,000 euros ($14,300) to get ahold of Microsoft's server protocols. If they're used in a rival's product, Microsoft's entitled to 0.4 percent of sales—Microsoft wanted 5.95 percent, so they've taken quite a pay cut, indicating that Microsoft's hands were pretty tied up on the matter. After their success in browbeating Microsoft here, it's anyone's guess as to where the EU's antitrust police will point their legal guns next. What do you guys think of the ruling? Should Microsoft have to relinquish code to the competition? [NYT, Flickr]