By Ben Nimmo Sep 18, 2007, 10:07 GMT
Brussels - The case of the European Commission versus software titan Microsoft is already set to go down in history as one of the most complex cases the European Union has ever considered.
There is no better way of highlighting that complexity than by looking at the comparisons players on both sides used to try and convince judges, journalists and the public that they are right.
'It's like buying a car. In the old days you couldn't buy a car with a radio, now it's a standard - does that mean the car makers are harming competition?' one commentator asked, when arguing that Microsoft's addition of its own media player to the Windows operating system improved one product rather than combining two.
'Actually, it's more like buying shoes. You'd never buy shoes without laces, but you can still buy laces separately,' another said, arguing that by that analogy, Microsoft's move was legal.
Opponents of Microsoft's argument ridiculed such analogies, pointing out that shoe makers do not normally make laces, and car makers do not make radios, but Microsoft did make the media player.
But having devoted four years and thousands of pages of documents to convincing the European Court of their argument, they clearly decided in the weeks before Monday's verdict that the best way to fight fire is with fire.
'Computers talking to each other is like a phone call. Normal people pick up the handset, wait for the tone, dial the number and wait for someone to reply,' a commentator said of the vexed issue of communication protocols between computers.
'But Microsoft computers will only work if you do all that and then say 'Hello, hello,'' he added.
In case the explanation was too high-tech for those journalists who find their own laptops a source of mystery and terror, his colleague then adopted another one.
'It's like constructing a sentence. Microsoft aren't telling us what order we have to put the subject, verb and object in,' he said.
And to make sure he reached even the most classically-educated audience, one Brussels-based expert added, 'Trying to get Microsoft's old codes is like teaching yourself Italian by reading Dante's Divine Comedy: you end up speaking perfect 13th-century Italian.'
On Monday, the European Court of First Instance cut through the metaphors and ruled that Microsoft had indeed breached EU competition law, as the European Commission claimed in 2004. Microsoft lawyers quickly promised to abide by the ruling.
But even that ruling did not come without a metaphor in tow.
'The 2004 ruling was as vague as saying: 'Go and build an Ark.' We need to know how long the Ark should be, how wide, what it should be made of,' a Microsoft employee said.
'You've been told your Ark has to float and have room for two of every creature, and you have to be able to live in it for 40 days. You're a ship builder, now go and build it,' an opponent replied.
'Mind you, it's a good analogy: if there's no Ark, we'll all be flooded by Microsoft,' his colleague added.
Your Talkback on this Story