Awesome! I hope that happens, I could totally see Europeans embracing Linux or other free alternatives. After all, Europeans are all about freedom, it seems
More like, they'll wait a year or two until the EU backs down and Europe will end up getting Vista SP1. It would hurt more to do a Europe wide ban on Windows, that would shit on Europe.
That's assuming they break down. There are plenty of alternatives, many of which I consider superior. It's like the metric system: sure it'll take a few years to get used to the overall change, but in the long-run it would be a huge improvement.
But there isn't much chance of that happening. More likely they'll come to a compromise. But I can dream!
I think they will, the European Union isn't being very fair. They arn't even TELLING Microsoft what to do to fix Vista, basically they're giving a vague description and telling them to deal with it. I think it's Microsoft that has the cards here, not the EU. What can Microsoft lose from a Europe loss? Vista isn't going to account for ALL of it's sales and Microsoft doesnt get all of it's sales from Vista.
So let's say Microsoft bans Vista from Europe for 1 year. The amount of money lost would be probably less than 1/3rd of their annual earnings for Windows. Would it hurt? Sure it'd sting a little.
I'm all for stopping abusive monopolies but not when you dont tell them what to do to comply. The EU told MS to remove WMP from XP and they did with XP version N (or something).
This will probably end up being a PR war with Microsoft making the EU look like a big bully and the EU eventually either easing up and telling MS what's wrong or the EU completely complying.
For example, how many home users (outside of technical people) view Microsoft as the "Bad guy". Most people in my family think that Microsoft produces great products so I don't think that the EU is winning an y popularity contests with the general public anytime soon.