By Jessica Mintz
Associated Press
Friday, February 22, 2008

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 21 -- Microsoft said Thursday that it will share more information about its products and technology in an effort to make it work better with rivals' software and meet the demands of antitrust regulators in Europe.

European Union regulators, however, expressed skepticism, saying the software maker did not touch on possible monopoly abuse in the past, or address allegations that it is trying to undercut rivals by illegally giving away its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system.

Microsoft said it was expanding access to information about how its programs work. Microsoft said it will give away documentation and computer code needed to make outside applications work with its Office suite, Windows operating system and other programs. In the past, Microsoft charged for the information.

The company will still charge patent license fees to companies that want to sell software built using this information. Ray Ozzie, the chief software architect, described the fees as "low royalty rates."

Microsoft said it posted 30,000 pages of documents online that will help non-Microsoft developers. Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business, said that those documents spell out how the company's programs work together -- allowing, for example, another company to build an e-mail system that works as well with Outlook as Microsoft's own Exchange Server.

Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, said at a news conference that the move could boost the ability of the firm's rivals to compete. But he said it also opens Microsoft's platform for developers to build products that could keep users interested in Windows PCs -- an essential ingredient if the company is going to survive an industry-wide shift toward Web-based programs that don't require a particular operating system.

Ballmer said the decision would have a relatively minimal impact on Microsoft's revenue.

Microsoft has spent years putting together this type of documentation to satisfy requests from antitrust regulators in the United States and the E.U.

E.U. regulators appeared unimpressed Thursday, saying they had heard it all before.

"The Commission would welcome any move toward genuine interoperability," regulators said in a statement. "Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability."

The E.U.'s newest investigation into how well Microsoft's products work with others was triggered by a complaint from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems -- a group representing IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, RealNetworks and Oracle.

"The world needs a permanent change in Microsoft's behavior, not just another announcement," the ECIS group said in a statement. "We have heard high-profile commitments from Microsoft . . . but have yet to see any lasting change in Microsoft's behavior in the marketplace."

Microsoft also announced that it would open an online forum to engage more with open-source developers.

"I don't think the company's suddenly about to get open-source religion," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst for the research group Directions on Microsoft. "This is an attempt to stave off further antitrust and unfair competition complaints in the E.U., particularly related to Office."