In 2009, Microsoft Corp. made a commitment to European antitrust regulators to provide “browser choice screens” (BCS) in their operating systems.  Now, the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, announced that they will see if Microsoft kept to their word, stating that the punishment would be severe if they failed to do so.

Funny thing is, Microsoft already confessed that they fell short in providing BCS on their operating systems, which did not go over too well with the commission.  Microsoft’s failure to provide BCS means that there are more than 28 million customers who were not given the freedom to choose which browser to install when they installed a new Microsoft OS.

“Due to a technical error, we missed delivering the BCS software to PCs that came with the service pack 1 update to Windows 7,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft did, however, say that PCs with the original versions of Windows 7, XP and Vista were provided with BCS.

“While we have taken immediate steps to remedy this problem, we deeply regret that this error occurred and we apologize for it,” Microsoft said.

You thought what?

Back in December, Microsoft provided a report to the commission stating that they were complying with their commitment but in their most recent statement, they revealed that they thought they were complying, didn’t know what happened, but they weren’t actually complying.  Okay, so that’s not their exact words, but that’s essentially what Microsoft was trying to convey.  So they’re now having the matter investigated, asking outside help to oversee the matter and provide suggestions as to how to avoid the same problem in the future.

There’s a possibility that Microsoft can come out of this unscathed – the UC may give them another 15 months to iron everything out and comply with the regulation.

“We understand that the Commission will review this matter and determine whether this is an appropriate step for Microsoft to take,” the statement said. “We understand that the Commission may decide to impose other sanctions.”

However, if the Commission decides that three years was enough and an extension wasn’t needed, Microsoft could be fined up to 10 percent of their annual turnover, or as much as $7 billion, for non-compliance.

Fine and fine again

Back in June, Microsoft was fined $1 billion by the European General Court for failing to comply with the European Union’s 2008 request that the software giant share their product information with competitors.  Since the EU investigation started, Microsoft’s had to pay a total of €1.7 billion in penalties: in 2004 they paid a penalty of €497 million for anticompetitive practices, with a further fine of €281 million for further breaches of competition rules.