Just because Microsoft has said it will comply immediately with a European Court judge's order to follow specified antitrust remedies doesn't mean life will be a bowl of cherries for Microsoft's partners, developers and even its competitors.

Industry watchers said they will be watching exactly how Microsoft makes good on the court-ordered removal of Windows Media Player from its Windows desktop operating system, and its publishing of communications protocols designed to make Windows better communicate with competitors' products.

Microsoft-Watch.com has a full article on the the repricussions of the EU decision to force Microsoft to pull its Media Player from the base OS. Including this quote:

"Forcing Microsoft to unbundled Windows Media Player is a bad decision for consumers," said Brad Wardell, president and CEO of Stardock Corp., a Windows software developer. "The universal availability of a capable media player as part of the OS enables software developers, consumers, and media professionals to make certain assumptions about what they can put into their software, make use of on a website, or distribute on the Internet."

Wardell said it will be crucial to see what kinds of underlying media technologies and files, rather than simply Windows Media Player itself, Microsoft unbundles from Windows.

"There's a lot of 'stuff' that Windows Media Player includes with it that developers routinely make use of to create things like inter-office radio, media streaming, etc. Developers like us put up .WMV files onto our websites as tutorials about our software because we can assume that Windows XP users have Windows Media Player," Wardell said.

Read the whole thing at Microsoft-Watch.com.

Editorial: That isn't to say that I think Microsoft should be able to toss anything they want into the OS. They are a monopoly. However, the courts need to weigh the pros and cons of these things more carefully. Having a basic ability to play music and video as part of the OS is different than throwing in anti-virus or Internet search.