One day, we may look back on Sept. 17 as the official beginning of the end for Microsoft’s dominance. Two separate events signaled the shift; one was the European Union court’s harsh ruling against Microsoft itself, charging that the world’s No. 1 software maker had abused its monopoly power to harm competitors. The verdict was expected – and showed that European bureaucrats had more courage than the U.S. Justice Department.

The other important announcement was IBM’s offering of Lotus Symphony, a suite of office applications, for free. This is just the latest bullet to the head of Microsoft’s cash cow. Years ago, when Google CEO Eric Schmidt ran Novell – and tried to save the faltering networking company – he argued that Microsoft’s real stranglehold on the PC market was not the Windows operating system but its Office productivity software suite.

Full Story Via Redherring.com

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