Date: 02-25-2008
Microsoft has announced plans to release 30,000 pages of licensed technical documentation for Windows and other programs on its website. Calling the move a “strategic shift,” Microsoft executives portrayed it as partly intended to placate European antitrust regulators. The licensed information, originally guarded as a trade secret, will be published so that rival Internet programs can work more easily with Windows, MS Office, and other Microsoft products. Sources also said that Microsoft is trying to convince antitrust regulators that it is not acting as a proprietary monopoly in an effort to get the pending Microsoft-Yahoo deal approved. Some observers also suggest the revelation might in fact prove beneficial to competitors like Linux, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described the potential financial impact from the leak as “relatively minimal,” although he acknowledged that Microsoft may lose some market share.
