at Microsoft.

They've asked the European Commission to help set their prices for Windows components.

I just know someone is not going to get why this is funny. I'll try to explain (but one can't of course really explain a joke).

Because of the extreme irony of any entrepreneurial venture at a loss for how to price properly--asking for regulatory help. When even the EU must know that a sound framework for innovation should mean moving away from regulatory pricing.

And because Microsoft is in effect asking EU regulators for a signed statement that what they are doing has nothing to do with markets, and everything to do with a rapacious appetite for fines from American companies.

The EU will I expect refuse to provide this informal assistance because if they fail to find a price that makes sense (the most likely income), it will constitute an admission that their price formulas and other demands and theories are gobbledygook.

So would providing the assistance with the stipulation that it is not binding on regulators down the road. If regulators cannot fairly be expected to comply, how can a private firm?

On the other hand, if they do set a price, however stupid, the EU also sets a standard of certainty with which they themselves will be expected to comply in the future. A degree of predictability that I suspect they themselves would see as very undesirable, for it forecloses further arbitrary ad hoc prosecutions. And in setting that price the regulatory would make their theories concrete, and therefore subject to analysis, criticism, and rebuttal.

Oh, someone at Microsoft has a sense of humor.