The European Commission today sent Microsoft a formal statement of objections over Redmond's failure to adequately roll out its "browser ballot" to users in the region.
The investigation is still ongoing, but the objection finds that Microsoft did indeed fail to roll out the browser choice screen with Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which was released in Feb. 2011.
"A statement of objections is a formal step in Commission investigations," it said today. "The Commission informs the parties concerned in writing of the objections raised against them and the parties can reply in writing and request an oral hearing to present comments."
A final decision will be handed down once Microsoft responds. "If a company has breached commitments made legally binding by way of an Article 9 decision, it may be fined up to 10 percent of its total annual turnover," the commission said.
The controversy dates back to 2009, when the European Commission announced that Microsoft violated European competition law by bundling its Internet Explorer browser with Windows. As a result, Microsoft said it would ship a version of Windows 7 with a "browser ballot" that would allow users to select which browser they wanted during the OS installation process. The EU approved that plan in Dec. 2009 and it started rolling out two months later.
Earlier this year, the commission notified Microsoft that it had received reports of people not seeing the browser screen choice (BCS). Microsoft said it investigated and discovered that users of Windows 7 service pack 1 were not seeing the browser ballot due to a technical error. A fix started rolling out to PCs running Windows 7 SP1 in early July.
The EU opened an investigation and EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said at the time that "if following our investigation, the infringement is confirmed, Microsoft should expect sanctions."
Microsoft issued the following statement: "We take this matter very seriously and moved quickly to address this problem as soon as we became aware of it. Although this was the result of a technical error, we take responsibility for what happened, and we have taken steps to strengthen our internal procedures to help ensure something like this cannot happen again. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and will continue to cooperate fully with the Commission."
A spokeswoman, meanwhile, said Microsoft will change "some aspects of the way the Browser Choice Screen works on Windows 8 and will have those changes implemented when Windows 8 launches later this week."
In related news, Reuters reports that the EU is not likely to go after Microsoft over the lack of browser choice in the RT version of Windows 8. That controversy started in May, when Mozilla said the RT version of the OS would only support Internet Explorer. The U.S. Senate is reportedly looking into the issue, but no action has been taken.
Editor's Note: This story was updated at 12:30 p.m. Eastern with comment from Microsoft.
For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
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