Microsoft, the EU and Facebook (2/2)

The European Union began to investigate Microsoft in nineteen ninety-eight after Sun Microsystems accused the company of being anti-competitive. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, fought back. But last month, it lost a big ruling. The second-highest court in the European Union agreed that Microsoft abused its market position.

In a separate case, Microsoft decided last week not to appeal a thirty-four million dollar fine by the Fair Trade Commission in South Korea.

But Microsoft could at least claim a victory in one of its efforts to expand its Internet business. This week it won the right to invest in Facebook and to expand an advertising partnership with the social networking site. Facebook chose Microsoft over Google, the leading Internet search company.

Microsoft will invest two hundred forty million dollars to buy a one and one-half percent interest. Microsoft values Facebook at fifteen billion dollars. Facebook reportedly expects about one hundred fifty million dollars in revenue this year. The company will be four years old in February and says the site has almost fifty million active users.

参考译文：

在Sun Microsystems公司控告其垄断之后，欧盟从1998年开始调查微软。微软在华盛顿雷德蒙德的总部对此做出反击。但是在上个月，微软输掉了一场大官司。欧盟的第二高级法庭判决微软滥用市场地位。

在单个案例中，上周微软决定不再就由韩国的公平交易委员会开出的3400万美金的罚款提起上诉。

但是微软至少在努力拓展因特网业务中赢得了胜利。这周微软获得了Facebook网站的投资权，并与该网络社区拓展了广告合作关系。Facebook选择了微软，而放弃了世界最大的引擎搜索公司Google。

微软以2.4亿美金购得1.5%的股份，其估计Facebook的价值达150亿美金。预计Facebook今年的收益为1.5亿美金。在明年2月公司已经成立四周年，网站有近5000万活跃用户。