A goodwill-hungry Microsoft yesterday committed itself to a dozen competition-friendly principles that will govern how it builds and sells its Windows operating system. Most of them, however, are just a rehash of commitments Microsoft had already made, which suggests that Microsoft cobbled together the list for PR purposes. Perhaps that's why Microsoft detailed top lawyer Brad Smith to make the announcement in Washington, D.C. News.com points out that "the announcement comes just a week after the European regulators slapped the company with a $357.3 million fine for noncompliance with a 2004 antitrust ruling."

The Microsoft Monitor Weblog notes that most of Microsoft's supposedly new principles are things that it had already promised or was required to do in antitrust-case settlements. Chris Nerney at Datamation understatedly suggests that skepticism is in order: "In the long history of commerce and corporations, I think it's fair to say that self-policing tends not to be the most effective method of ensuring fairness toward competitors or customers."