Microsoft Hiding From European Win7 Pricing July 1st, 2009
It’s only kinda their fault. In Europe we pointed out that Win7 pricing was quite a bit higher than in the States. Microsoft essentially shouted “don’t blame us, it’s the damn antitrust at the EU!” Nice try Microsoft. The are claiming that due to the need for European Win7 to not include IE, they cannot let users purchase the “upgrade” versions of Win7. They need to pull IE from those machines, thus requiring the people wishing Win7 to buy a full version. The brings pricing closer to parity.
However, let’s count of the differences between a DVD with the full version of Win7 and the upgrade version, in terms of cost to MSFT. Still at zero? Fair enough. Microsoft is trying to get away with predatory pricing on European customers, and blame their regulators. Get real, software is not hard to ship. It’s hard to build, but MSFT has already built it. Perhaps Microsoft has some ulterior motive for this pricing scheme, but I have yet to find a legitamate reason for this.
I understand the need to make money, especially when you are dumping tens of millions into new products like Bing. But this reasoning is merely ridiculous. People are no longer foolish enough to spend hundreds on software without batting an eye. The pirates will make up an price differential that you throw at them. Try again Microsoft.
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