A: Kroes isn’t losing $100 million a month on Sun Microsystems.

Much as Ellison would like to blame the European Commission for yesterday’s bloodletting at Sun, responsibility lies squarely with Oracle (ORCL). For while Ellison complains that every month the $7.4 billion acquisition is delayed amounts to a $100 million loss for Sun (JAVA), he has not yet given the EC good reason to approve it–at least according Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who’s disappointed with Oracle’s cooperation in the commission’s antitrust probe so far.

Kroes said as much in a recent meeting with Oracle president Safra Catz, according to Jonathan Todd, the commission’s spokesman for competition.

“Kroes expressed her disappointment that Oracle failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or a proposal for a remedy to the competition concerns identified by the commission,” Todd told Bloomberg. “Kroes reiterated to Catz the commission’s willingness to move quickly towards a decision but underlined that a rapid solution lies in Oracle’s hands. Either they have to give us the information to prove that our competition concerns are not well founded or offer remedies to satisfy our concerns.”

So if Oracle is looking for a quick solution to the case, it best provide one–otherwise, it’s looking at $100 million a month in losses at Sun.

“I’m absolutely of the opinion that this is a trustful deal that we’re making. I trust Microsoft,” Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said during a press conference this morning. “There can’t be a misunderstanding. Here is the final result of a long discussion over a long period.”

Microsoft (MSFT) was equally upbeat on the EC’s decision. “We welcome today’s announcement by the European Commission to move forward with formal market testing of Microsoft’s proposal relating to web browser choice in Europe,” General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. “We also welcome the opportunity to take the next step in the process regarding our proposal to promote interoperability with a broad range of our products.”

There were, however, a few that were not so welcoming of the move. Top among them, ECIS, an industry group whose members include Oracle (ORCL), Sun (JAVA), IBM (IBM) and Nokia (NOK). “ECIS notes that the settlement does not appear to deal with the inadequacies of Microsoft’s standards compliance, unfair pricing practices or other concerns related to patent abuse or standards manipulation,” the group said in a statement.

“The Commission has to examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world’s leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world’s leading open source database company,” said Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. “In particular, the Commission has an obligation to ensure that customers would not face reduced choice or higher prices as a result of this takeover.”

In short, the Commission’s concern is with Sun’s open-source database, MySQL, and Oracle’s plans for it. A preliminary market investigation has shown “that the Oracle databases and Sun’s MySQL compete directly in many sectors of the database market and that MySQL is widely expected to represent a greater competitive constraint as it becomes increasingly functional,” the Commission explained. The “investigation has also shown that the open source nature of Sun’s MySQL might not eliminate fully the potential for anti-competitive effects.” So the Commission will dig a bit deeper to determine just how much incentive Oracle has to further develop MySQL as an open-source database.

A tough break for Oracle (ORCL), which now has to suffer through an EC probe scheduled to last until Jan. 19, one that increases the chances the company may have to divest some features of Sun’s (JAVA) business to get the deal done.

European regulators slapped Intel with an antitrust fine and, as expected, it’s a large one–a record $1.45 billion, which dwarfs even the $1.2 billion fine levied against Microsoft in 2008. The largest ever assessed for monopoly abuse, the fine follows charges that Intel (INTC) abused its market dominance by illegally inducing PC manufacturers to use its chips over those of rival AMD (AMD).

“The Commission finds that Intel did not compete fairly, frustrating innovation and reducing consumer welfare in the process,” Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition Policy, said at a news conference announcing the fine. “Given that Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for over five years, the size of the fine should come as no surprise.”

And after all, it could have been worse. The $1.45 billion assessment is quite a bit less than the maximum fine the EC could have levied–10 percent of a company’s annual revenue. Given that Intel made $37.6 billion in 2008, the EC could have slapped it with a penalty of $4 billion.

Intel denied any wrongdoing and said it would appeal. “Intel takes strong exception to this decision,” CEO Paul Otellini said in a statement released immediately after the announcement. “We believe the decision is wrong and ignores the reality of a highly competitive microprocessor marketplace–characterized by constant innovation, improved product performance and lower prices. There has been absolutely zero harm to consumers. Intel will appeal. We do not believe our practices violated European law. The natural result of a competitive market with only two major suppliers is that when one company wins sales, the other does not.”

And apparently European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes agrees (though on Microsoft her opinion clearly diverges from Varney’s quite a bit). Sources tell the Financial Times that Kroes has been increasingly looking askance at Google and its efforts to rule the information economy. “Kroes has taken to pondering the anti-trust implications of Google’s dominance of the internet in a ‘thinking-out-loud’ kind of way,” the FT reports. “According to our source, the European anti-trust chief–who looks set to deliver a double-whammy to the old Wintel partnership with stinging fines this week and over the summer–has raised the question, unprompted, in at least one meeting with tech industry representatives.”

Now, as the FT notes, Kroes’s interest in Google (GOOG) is no indication that the EC is planning a review of the company and its business practices. Right now the agency has its hands full with Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC). It does, however, suggest that Google best keep its informal “don’t be evil” motto top of mind at home and abroad. Especially now that Microsoft is using Google’s dominant position in the search market as a defense in its own EC antitrust case.

The European Commission said today that if its antitrust investigation into Microsoft (MSFT) concludes that the company has been abusing its market position, it may force it to bundle multiple browsers with Windows or slap it with significant fines based on sales of Windows in the EU. “The Commission would consider ordering Microsoft to give users an objective opportunity to choose which competing web browsers instead of, or in addition to, Internet Explorer they want to install in Windows,” said an EC spokesman. “Microsoft could also be ordered to technically allow the user to disable Internet Explorer code should the user choose to install a competing browser.”

Microsoft hasn’t yet officially responded to the charges or requested a hearing in which to plead its case. But it must do something soon because clearly, its “but PC users are already free to run any Web browser in Windows” argument isn’t working.

This morning the EC slapped the software giant with another $1.35 billion in fines for failing to comply with its 2004 antitrust order. “Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision,” European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes said. “I hope that today’s decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft’s record of noncompliance with the commission’s March 2004 decision and that the principles confirmed by the Court of First Instance ruling of September 2007 will govern Microsoft’s future conduct.”

The fine is the largest the EU has ever imposed against a single company in an antitrust case and brings Microsoft’s total European antitrust tab to about $2.5 billion, in current exchange rates. Quite a sum, to be sure. But for Microsoft, one that could easily come out of the “Found Beneath Bill Gates’s Couch Cushions” fund. Said Jeremy Allison, co-creator of the open-source workgroup file-and-print-server software Samba, “That’s not a fine, that’s just a way of getting their attention.”

In a statement, Microsoft said it was “reviewing the commission’s actions,” adding that the fine concerned past issues it thought had been resolved. “As we demonstrated last week with our new interoperability principles and specific actions to increase the openness of our products, we are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future,” the company said.

But Kroes wasn’t having any of it. “Talk, as you know, is cheap,” she said this morning. “We don’t want talk and promises.”

Less than three months after agreeing to comply with key elements of the European Commission’s 2004 antitrust order against it, the company is facing new accusations of monopoly abuse. Norway’s Opera Software ASA said today it has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer Web browser to Windows and hindering interoperability by not implementing widely accepted Web standards.

“We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them,” Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said in a rather here-I-come-to-save-the-day statement. “In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we’ve brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide.”

And reminded the world that Opera is not just a drama set to music, but an unpopular Web browser, as well.

Opera asks that the EC’s competition division force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows and require the company to follow fundamental and open Web standards, which is an interesting twist on the old antitrust classic. And one that may have some legs, given IE’s inability to pass the Web Standards Project Acid2 test. “Microsoft often participates and even promises to support these standards, but we find it often isn’t the case,” Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie told ZDNet. “We find bugs and programmers have to code around (Microsoft).”

“At the time the Court of First Instance issued its judgment in September, Microsoft committed to taking any further steps necessary to achieve full compliance with the commission’s decision. We have undertaken a constructive discussion with the commission and have now agreed on those additional steps,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We will … continue to work closely with the commission and the industry to ensure a flourishing and competitive environment for information technology in Europe and around the world.”

Quite the change of heart for a company that once trashed the European Union for dreaming up “new laws” that could hurt others in the technology industry.

And so, after more than three years of legal wrangling and nearly $1.43 billion in fines, Microsoft will license key “interoperability information” to rivals who need it to make their software compatible with Windows, which will likely have huge ramifications for the industry.

“Now that Microsoft has agreed to comply with the 2004 decision, the company can no longer use the market power derived from its 95% share of the PC operating system market and 80% profit margin to harm consumers by killing competition on any market it wishes,” Kroes said. “These changes in Microsoft’s business practices, in particular toward open-source developers, will profoundly affect the software industry. The repercussions of these changes will start now and will continue for years to come.”