The Commission stressed that the letter that Ms Kroes sent to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was in reaction to a request from Microsoft itself to point out possible problems with the Vista version of Windows, likely to hit the market early in 2007.
In its letter, the Commission points out four features of Vista that may cause competition problems for various reasons: The integration of so-called digital rights management technology, the creation of new proprietary file formats which could exclude access by competitors, the integration of internet search into the Windows desktop and a new security feature, called Windows defender, which would prevent the execution of non-authorised code like for instance spy-ware.
