Microsoft today flung open its software APIs and protocols to all comers. Is it enough to persuade the European Commission to drop anti-trust investigations of the company? In a word, no. The Commission today noted that Microsoft has issued four statements in the past promoting interoperability, and it wants to see if a) the new pledge conforms with EC competition law and b) if Microsoft actually walks it like it talks it.

Today's news also does nothing, the EC says, to address the Commission's probe of the implications of Microsoft's practice of bundling products. The EC calls this "tying of separate software products".

The Commission launched two anti-trust investigations into Microsoft last month.

One -

focuses on the alleged illegal refusal by Microsoft to disclose sufficient interoperability information across a broad range of products, including information related to its Office suite, a number of its server products, and also in relation to the so called .NET Framework and on the question whether Microsoft's new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products.

The second investigation revolves around the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.

The Commission's press release is here. ®

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