Reports: $615 million fine
As explained in this story by the Associated Press, various news services are quoting sources out of Brussels who say the European Commission will fine Microsoft about 500 million euros, or $615 million.
If you're keeping score at home, that's less than 2 percent of Microsoft's 2003 annual revenue, which topped $32 billion.
The maximum penalty under EU regulations is 10 percent of a company's annual revenues. For an extra bit of context, remember that Microsoft paid AOL Time Warner $750 million last year to settle the private antitrust suit that grew out of the Netscape-Internet Explorer browser wars.
Posted by Todd Bishop at March 22, 2004 07:33 PM
