Microsoft has dropped two outstanding appeals of European antitrust rulings, following the deal struck with the European Commission at the beginning of this week, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The European Commission - Directorate for Competition has officially dropped its antitrust charges against Microsoft, after Microsoft agreed to provide users of its Windows operating system a choice of web browsers. Under the new deal, Microsoft will avoid future E.C. fines and, from March, consumers will have a choice of up to twelve other web browsers.

U.S. antitrust officials have approved Yahoo's (purchase of e-mail software maker Zimbra for $350 million, the Federal Trade Commission announced on Monday.
Antitrust authorities took a preliminary look at the deal and said it posed no antitrust concerns, the FTC said in a statement

There has been criticism against the European Commission for pursuing abusive behaviour by Microsoft, and against Mozilla for wanting a fair chance to compete against Microsoft. The blog post explains why the Commission is doing the right thing to take antitrust violation seriously, and why the Free Software community should support this case.

The European Commission fined Microsoft a massive €899 million (US$1.3 billion) for continued failure to honor the 2004 antitrust ruling against it, Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes said Wednesday.

Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute.

Fresh action in the European Commission's antitrust proceedings against Microsoft: On May 24, the European Court of Justice conducts a hearing on Microsoft's appeal against the fine. FSFE has participated in the case for a decade and will intervene on the Commission's behalf.

A European Union court upheld most of a landmark 2004 European Commission antitrust decision against Microsoft

Novell has filed a Notice of Appeal in its antitrust litigation against Microsoft. That's the case about its WordPerfect claims. Despite Microsoft prevailing on its motion to dismiss, for technical reasons I'll explain a bit in a minute, I want you to read what the judge said Microsoft did to Novell