Vista Antitrust Case in the Making?

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Not even out of the starting gate it seems as though Vista’s slated for a rough start, if it ever gets to even race. State and federal prosecutors have been in talks with several companies over Microsoft’s next operating system Vista. The U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general are gathering information on the complaints but they have not yet decided if they have enough material to bring into action an antitrust case against Microsoft. This is all according to a report filed Wednesday with the judge overseeing Microsoft's U.S. antitrust compliance.

One of the complaints rests with Vista's "Welcome Center" feature, which greets users after they start a new PC. The feature also advertises other products, and Microsoft
has haggled with PC makers, including Hewlett-Packard, over this valuable real estate. Since the feature will be shown to hundreds of millions of computer users, companies will intensely negotiate with Microsoft in order to get their product shown.

Since Vista is the first new operating system Microsoft has developed under the eye of antitrust regulators, one of their concerns if Microsoft will use its control of Windows to push consumers to use other Microsoft products, such as its browser and media player (something that is very similar to the previous antitrust case). According to the status report, Vista's Welcome Center also will present users "with various setup options." These complaints, although somewhat quiet, might have an effect on the release of the anticipated and many time postponed OS.

The company discussed Welcome Center's design with the top 20 PC makers "and nearly all of them are satisfied" with the design approach, spokesman Jack Evans said. "We've worked closely with our partners throughout the development process to ensure Vista provide unprecedented flexibility and opportunity to them," Evans said.

The key word in that statement is nearly. Hewlett-Packard and Dell did not comment on the report Wednesday night. The status report gave no details about the other complaints. It said only that regulators "are also talking with several industry members who have expressed additional concerns regarding aspects of Windows Vista."

As it stands, we won’t know for sure if Vista will be delayed in order to meet these quibbling complaints, but we do know that Microsoft is struggling and rigorously working on releasing Vista by the second half of this year.