A Microsoft shareholder has filed a lawsuit against the company concerning its poor handling of an error that ended up with the company being fined $731m by the EU.
In the filing at Seattle’s federal court, Kim Barovic called out Microsoft’s directors and executives, including founder Bill Gates and ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, as culpable for not managing the company in a right way and not doing enough to determine the reason for the mistake concerning user’s default Internet browser choice.
Barovic demanded that Microsoft’s board further investigate the reasons of the mistake, and look to act against the directors or executives concerned. In a statement cited by Reuters, Microsoft noted, "Ms. Barovic asked the board to investigate her demand and bring a lawsuit against the board and company executives.
"The board thoroughly considered her demand as she requested and found no basis for such a suit."
Microsoft was sued by the EU regulators in March 2013 over failing to meet obligations it made in 2009 to offer consumers with a web browser choice screen in its Windows 8 operating system, rather than directly taking them to default Internet Explorer browser.
The company blamed the issue on a technical error, however, an investigation carried out by antitrust regulators revealed that updated software rolled out between May 2011 and July 2012 did not offer a choice of how to acces the web to as many as 15 million Microsoft Windows customers.
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