E.U.’s trustbuster makes a point

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When it comes to firing a warning across the bows of firms involved in antitrust disputes (read Google), the European Union is using some heavy cannon. It has fined Microsoft €561 million euros ($731 million) for failing to comply with a 2009 agreement to offer users a choice of web browsers.

It is the first time the E.U. has imposed a penalty for failure to comply with such an agreement. As the chart shows, it is one of the six heaviest the powerful antitrust commission under Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia (above) has imposed and takes the total fines levied on Microsoft to beyond €2 billion.

It also shows that Almunia wants companies to get serious about using settlements to resolve antitrust disputes. In fast-changing industries such as technology, settlements have the advantage, for both the regulated and the regulator, of speed over traditional antitrust legal proceedings. But a settlement is not a brush-off, though the E.U. feels that many multinationals treat it so. Yet if the E.U. wants companies to abide by their antitrust agreements it will also have to step up its own compliance monitoring — as well as firing off its cannon.