The European Commission threatened Microsoft with another big fine on Tuesday after the US software giant failed to give 28 million European customers the ability to choose their web browser.

The US software company immediately apologized for the "technical error" after 28 million users of the Windows 7 operating system were unable to choose between the company's default Internet Explorer and other browsers.

"While we have taken immediate steps to remedy this problem, we deeply regret that this error occurred and we apologize for it," Microsoft said in a statement.

In order to ease European Union competition concerns in 2009, the US software giant committed to provide Windows users in Europe a "choice screen" enabling them to choose an alternative web browser until 2014.

But the screen has been missing from a service pack 1 update to Windows 7 since February 2011.

AFP