Instead Of Letting Free Markets Operate, EU Attack Microsoft (MSFT)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 27, 11:35PM EDT · Published May 30, 9:33AM EDT

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The EU has decided to go further to force Microsoft (MSFT) to give competition to its Internet Explorer a better chance to get PC market share. According to The Wall Street Journal, the EU’s new plan to help Redmond’s rivals is by “forcing a bunch of browsers into Windows, thus diluting Microsoft’s advantage.”

The EU might as well let the free markets take their course. Microsoft IE is already bleeding browser share without any government intervention and Google (GOOG) is aggressively marketing its new browser “Chrome.”

Apple’s (AAPL) Safari broser currently has more than 7% of the market and as Mac sales rise at the expense of PCs. Mozilla Firefox had a 21% share at the end of 2008 up from 17% a year earlier.

The EU should stop wasting its time. IE is in enough trouble on its own.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.