Observers point to other areas where the reasoning behind Europe's stance seems unclear. For instance, why bring an action against Microsoft when the complaining company, Opera, has less than 1 percent market share? Additionally, Microsoft has been losing important share to Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari — two of the other browsers expected to be on the Windows desktop if the EC prevails.
"Opera's claim that they're disadvantaged seems a little disingenuous to me because Mozilla [the open source group behind Firefox] doesn't seem to have much trouble gaining Market share from Microsoft," King added.
Microsoft's current browser market share on a global basis has fallen to 68 percent, according to recent statistics by Web metrics firm Net Applications. That's down from the high 90s just four years ago, when Firefox debuted. Today, Firefox holds 21 percent and Apple's Safari nearly 8 percent.
Both of those browsers, said one analyst, built substantial market share despite Microsoft's inclusion of IE in Windows.
"If you do look at market statistics, this comes at a time when IE is really losing share," Matt Rosoff, analyst at Directions on Microsoft, told InternetNews.com.
"I install Firefox in a couple of minutes and it doesn't require a reboot," he added, stressing how easily consumers can switch browsers today.
It's Going to Be a Bumpy Ride
Microsoft has had a busy recent history of unsuccessful legal dustups with the EC.
In September 2007, the European Union's Court of First Instance (CFI) upheld an earlier EC ruling against Microsoft that the firm had abused its dominant market position in two areas. First, Microsoft was found guilty of illegally tying its Windows Media Player to Windows, forcing Microsoft to offer a version of Windows in Europe without a media player.
However, that product has never been popular as most consumers opt for a copy of Windows with the media player installed.
Second, the EC ruled that Microsoft had repeatedly withheld technical documentation on how competitors could interface with the software giant's server products. Microsoft paid two fines totaling nearly $1 billion to pay those infractions off.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is still awaiting an appeal in another case with the EC. Microsoft's lawyers are appealing a further $1.35 billion fine levied by the Commission against Microsoft last year for dragging its heels in providing competitors with technical documentation it had been ordered to turn over under the 2007 ruling.
Microsoft is also under investigation by the EC regarding interoperability between its Office software and other vendors' products.
Further, the EC is reported to be looking into Microsoft's behavior during its highly-politicized push in 2007 and 2008 to make Office 2007's default file formats — dubbed Office Open XML — a standard certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
