Trustbusters on either side of the Atlantic had seemed in permanent disagreement in 2009, at least when it came to technology firms. In January the European Commission decided to go after Microsoft for bundling its web browser with its operating system-a tactic which America's Department of Justice (DOJ) had decided to let stand a long time before. In May the commission fined Intel €106 billion (then $1.44 billion) for having abused its dominance, whereas the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in Washington did not seem interested. And in November the commission objected to the proposed $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems, a troubled maker of computer hardware, by Oracle, a business-software giant-a deal that the DOT had already approved.
展开▼
