EU looks to wrap up Microsoft probe
C|Net | at | by Mike
A top European Union official said on Monday that a ruling in its Microsoft antitrust inquiry will happen by the end of the year. "We're completing our analysis" in the investigation, said Phillip Lowe, the next director general for Competition. The effort has focused on Microsoft's server software and streaming media technology. Lowe told a conference organized by the American Antitrust Institute that he expected to work closely with U.S. regulators, and he hinted that Europe was waiting for a federal judge to rule on the Microsoft case. A European decision likely will wait "until Microsoft has more clarity on the U.S. side," Lowe told reporters afterward. He stressed, however, that "we are addressing questions of interoperability, which are not quite the same as the initial judgment and appeal" in the United States. Lowe, previously the director of the EU's merger task force, starts his new job Sept. 1.