European Union has fined the technology giant Microsoft $731 million for breaching the terms of it’s Browser Ballot agreement. The fine slapped on Microsoft comes after the company failed to provide Windows users with a choice of alternate browsers, as had been specified in the agreement back in 2009.

The decision to impose fine on Microsoft was termed as significant by Europe’s antitrust and competition chief Joaquin Almunia, who laid emphasis on the importance of maintaining the terms of a legal agreement and said, 

The issue began back in 2009, when Microsoft was accused of manipulating the battle for browser share by Opera Software, which said that the Microsoft was violating the European Competition law by tying Internet Explorer to Windows. Later, Microsoft agreed to display a “browser ballot” during the installation process of Windows 7 , allowing users to chose from different browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. 

However, the company failed to keep up with it’s promise and did not display the “browser ballot” to approximately 15 million users of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), who got the operating system between May 2011 to July 2012. 

Though Microsoft did acknowledge the error last year in July and termed it as a ‘technical glitch’, blaming it’s engineering team for the fiasco, but that did not sop the European authorities from slapping the fine. 

Joaquin Almunia said that the huge fine imposed on Microsoft was finalized after taking into account the duration till Microsoft violated the terms of agreement and also, the need to warn other companies against breaking the terms of a legal agreement. He later added that the fine could have been much higher, but was kept comparatively low as Microsoft co-operated with the investigation.