Vista on Track: Microsoft Bends For E.U., Korea

Microsoft thinks it has changed Vista sufficiently to satisfy European and Korean regulators.

The company said that it would be releasing the Vista operating system in Europe and Korea on schedule, following what it called “constructive dialogue” with the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission.

The changes to Vista made to assuage the Europeans will be integrated into the worldwide release.

Microsoft also made changes to the operating system that are specific to the Korean release.

Microsoft said it will ship Vista to its volume license business customers in November of this year and will make it generally available in January.

This is a sudden turn-about for Microsoft, which only last month said it might not be able to ship Vista to Europe unless it got further guidance from European regulators.

For its part, the commission stuck to its public stance: It cannot green-light a product before it hits the market.

But after waging a high-stakes public relations battle over the past several months, cooler heads on both sides prevailed.

According to Microsoft spokesman Guy Esnouf, back-channel discussions seem to have reassured the Redmond, Wash., software vendor that the changes it intends to make will pass muster with the European watchdog.

“We’ve had a constructive dialog with the commission for the last two weeks,” he told internetnews.com.

According to Tom Brookes, a Microsoft spokesman based in Europe, Steve Ballmer called Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes last night to inform her of the company’s decision to ship Vista.

In particular, Microsoft has addressed concerns about how it would work with third-party vendors of security software.

Full article: internetnews.com