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Windows Could Lose Media Player in Europe?
Chris Gondek writes "If Microsoft cannot settle an antitrust case brought by European Union regulators, the company may be ordered to remove Windows Media Player as an integrated feature of the dominant Windows operating system, at least for personal computers sold in Europe.
The European Commission also could order Microsoft to include rival media players with Windows to make those products as easy for users to access as Microsoft's own music and video player."
Why should Microsoft be required to offer Real's whoreware product, laden with spyware and annoying popups and notifications. Including a Real codec for WMP and QuickTime is one thing (and something the companies would have to provide), but requiring malware to be forced upon every user is something else. Even if it was a nice program like WinAmp, I still don't think they should be required to bundle their competitors programs. Requiring compatibility through codecs is okay.
Of course, nobody *had* to use Real OR WMA. MPEG is viewable on any OS out of the box. The the Real and QuickTime players are free, and QuickTime is easy to install to boot (save for the annoying upgrade notices, another thing I don't want "bundled" with my OS).
Did the European Commission ever consider people don't want the alternatives? I don't need extra little icons in my task tray, I don't need spyware, I don't need notifications of news or Pro versions. Please, let us install our own crapware.
at not a web browser?
seriously, which is more ingrained and used every day?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
BS, including a competitors product with your own???... Here, take this copy of Paint Shop Pro (bundled with Photoshop) hope you come back to buy PSP again..
What's wrong with a company pushing people to use their products? I am not a fan of Microsoft, but why shuold they be forced to include third-party software?
What is your penile percentile?
Why stop there?
...It's already been proven (albeit in the US) that it was used to illegally wedge Netscape out of the browser market.
Should they also demand that they also remove Internet Explorer?
Steve.
So I guess microsoft's next move will be to buy Winamp? :)
I bet they'll be a checkbox during installation "If you want to be able to view video's you will need to click the checkbox" and if checked it will automatically download Media player.. Seriously how hard does microsoft have to work to defeat these things? Last I checked Internet Explorer was still being shipped.. If they really wanted to help, why wouldn't the gov't just invest grants in RealPlayer or something instead of wasting money trying to fight microsoft.
Mod +5 Drunk
...for the users.
Norway voted against joining twice.
Since when is a media player a core component of an operating system?
Stop corporate
Could it be because competition is a good thing? Sure Real and their practices suck, but would you rather have no choice but WMP? And I'm only addressing you in the general sense, because like americans, there are undoubtably millions of europeans who don't know or give a rat's patoot, so long as they can watch or listen to their hearts content.
Encourage a level playing field and let each player, or those yet to be born, to have a fair shot at it and survive or die based upon their own merits.
"Psst! Push Ogg!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Linux has no trouble with bundled software because there basically is none forced upon you. Linux itself is just the kernel, any distros that ship anything else will usually give you a few CDs with several hundred popular apps. I can't think of any distro that has just one media player or one browser that you can't install the distro without. Plus, any single distro doesn't have the market share that would constitute a monopoly even if they did force this on you.
I'm very torn on this issue. I'm no fan of MS. But at the same time, where do you draw the line and say, "you can integrate this into the OS, but you can't integrate that." What should be allowable and what shouldn't? Who should decide? This is not much different from the case brought years ago about the integration of the web browser. What about MS Paint? What about WordPad? And games?
Users expect a certain amount of stuff built into the OS. Maybe this expectation exists because of MS, but it exists. Gnome and KDE both come with a bunch of software. Granted, they're both OSS, but I think users have this expectation and it must be met to some degree for any company to succeed.
I know a lot of newbie users who can't even figure out how to get Acrobat installed and without help from someone who's computer literate, they wouldn't be able to read PDF attachments, which are pretty common.
Anyway, I'm torn on it. I don't want to see MS continue as a monopoly, but I want them to fail for the right reasons, not some arbitrary, "you can add this, but not that" kind of rule unless it's applied equally to all competitors.
What happened to the concept of a free market?
It died when Microsoft became a monopoly.
Rules are different for monopolies. Microsoft has a monopoly in the desktop operating system market. They leveraged that monopoly to gain a monopoly in the office productivity market. They leveraged that to gain a foothold and the beginnings of dominance in the server market. Now they're using this monopoly to push out others in the multimedia market.
The capitalist system allowed them to get where they are today. They used the laws and regulations to stop smaller companies. They must therefore abide by the laws now.
"The European Commission is considering new regulation which could order McDonalds corporation to bundle french fry from the rival Burger King restaurant chain. This will ensure that Burger King fries are as easy to access for customers, as McDonalds own proprietary fries."
Seriously, why would the above be considered a joke, while people are actually seriously considering a comparable ruling against MS?
If Real wants its product to be accessible, they should make it so you don't have to play "Hunt the Free Version Link" on their website for 4 hours to get their software. Idiots.
As to WMP, I think the ability to play a video or sound has gotten to be something people expect of an OS. Macs can sure as hell play video out of the box - to me it would be unfair to say MS couldn't do this. Let software compete on merit - not on the basis of goofy artificial restrictions to protect software that very few people want.
Years ago, we went through the same dance with the browser - and that dance looks retarded now. Imagine if Windows today shipped without a browser? How would most people go about getting one? It would be a crippled OS. As years go by, and PC's do more media work, WMP will look the same way.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
With media player gone, they'll still leave all the API stuff so every other media player will still be tied to Microsoft's format, and as a consequence tied to Windows.
Even insisting they release an x86 binary library for playing WMA on *nix and upgrade it at the same time as any changes to the Windows version would open up all the DRM infected stuff to linux users. We might not like the DRM, but in two years time when most folk get their music that way, it's going to be abig obsticle for Linux adoption if folk can't buy tunes.
Because that would be smart. Governments have trouble doing anything smart.
Opening formats, all formats, would be a great solution for all these Monopoly problems. Not only would stuff like OpenOffice and media players interoperate perfectly, the public wouldn't get in an uproar because they will not see it as some stupid "hinderance to capitalism." I mean is the public sofisticated enough to see how important these formats are? No... CNN still makes incipid comments like "the source code is the recipe for the programs" and stuff like that. If the opened the formats and doggedly forced the ENTIRE api to be published then a huge amount of this problem might go away.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
This doesn't appear to be some anti-American "let's hurt Microsoft" reasoning by the EU; their concerns seem very legitimate to me.
I would love for all the formats to be made public. Microsoft has no write to hold data captive because the formats are secret.
Not the Mac users (not by default, and even if you download it you do not have all the same codecs). But if you'd like to exclude a significant portion of the market that has a lot of money, hey - feel free.
What everyone actually has is Quicktime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While it is nice to attack Microsoft for its monopolistic intentions. Like it or not, it is sufficiently integrated itself that it soon should be considered a Public Utility and regulated just like water, gas, Phone and TV/Cable/Sat. In many respects this is what happen to Standard Oil and AT&T. Yes they owned the market and they delivered a good product and yes it could be argued they over charged and drove out competition.
But the answer in the end was not microscale adjustments to their business but to have it redefined. If you want to protest against MS, then do it terms of macroscale effects such as actually splitting it up along product lines.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
As for Real, I think their actions speak for themselves. Rather than find a niche to compete in they lowered themselves and turned their product from bad to worse. I remember a time when the player was nice, but even Winamp of the time was better. Basically I'd say they just need to create a much more badass streaming server as that is where the money is, charging for Real One was ultimately a mistake as it was a piece of crap so users felt short changed by it when there are plenty of other free players available. Of course the guys at Winamp have it easy as they are financed by another monopoly. (AOL)
That is allInstead of forcing MS to include competitor's products, they should be required to publish their interfaces, so that any competitive product can be integrated with OS as completely as media player.
The sad thing is that even if the ruling against Microsoft passes, this won't change a thing.
The problem is not so much software shipping with the OS, as APIs relying on the integrated software. Where Internet Explorer is concerned, for example, the Windows API offers certain features that are implemented in IE rather than in the OS. This means that from the moment you've got -any- piece of software that uses any of those API functions (to render help, for instance), then IE will no longer be optional. This is why back in the days when Windows 98 was released but didn't dominate the market yet, some third party software packages shipped with IE (in the same way games ship with the DirectX version they need nowadays), so that their software would run on 95. And the IE-ization of Windows 95 boxes everywhere happened just on its own.
And you can -bet- the exact same thing will happen here. One likely possibility is, [Palladium.latestName()] will provide some API to allow media-oriented software to transfer audio/video to the hardware via an encrypted conduit, and that API will be implemented in Microsoft Media Player. And without looking so far forward, I believe that there already are some products (Adobe Premiere?) that depend on some bit of API provided by Microsoft Media Player.
Even if your OS comes with competing products, sooner or later you'll need to install MMP.
Judge Jackson had the right idea all along. Split up Microsoft, **AND** have ANY technical information (API definitions...) exchanged between MS-core and MS-components made public.
This way, competitors could have accessed the information necessary to provide THEIR own implementation of any middleware API Microsoft published.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
If they remove Media Player, which in the case of XP both Media 6.4, 8/9 will be gone. I for one won't mind the fact that 8/9 will be gone, but 6.4 is till bey far the lightest and simplest media player for playing my collection of media. Its lightweight and small footprint is awesome and with a simple click of a button, you can go full screen, and it even plays playlists. Though the playlist feature is a bit clunky, but for the sheer size, and performance, I would think giving up 6.4 would be a bad idea. Putting in quicktime and Real would not solve the problems either because those players are just too much of a memory hog. Yuck.
:-)
But that's just my two cents since I am still using a stoneage of a computer clocking barely at 500MhZ
My beef starts when the frigging IE and WMP are so deeply entrenched in the OS. I would stop half my MS bashing if, when you fire up the "Add/Remove programs", you get IE and WMP among normal apps. And when you wish to uninstall them, it works.
Clicked links outside the broswer will randomly open in IE, open in a new Firefox window or the same Firefox window I was browsing in. And that sucks.
Don't stop bundling. Stop TANGLING and BOGGING.
Rock = the vast majority of computer users don't care what software plays back their video or audio. They just want it to work. If Windows was forced to remove it's media player, most consumers will become frustrated. They open the box, plug it in, and expect it to work and do everything without having to go out and download software.
Hard place = _because_ most users don't care, they just use the bundled software. I.E. WMP. Which just leads us to the monopoly issue...
So, Microsoft has to either
A) Upset its user base by "breaking" their OS so as to not play media right out of the box or
B) Be sued out of their pants by every company that comes along and makes a competing product to some particular component to the monolith known as windows.
Unfortunately for end users, it will most likely be B, and this will just have to be a fact of life that they will have to learn to live with.
Of course, M$ can always include their competitors software with Windows, and ask at installation which they would prefer. But then where does it end? Which competitors must they include? Do each of these competitors have to pay to have their software included? If so how much? Will we see Windows price explode as a result? If they don't have to pay, then is it really right to force Microsoft to include their competitors software on a product they have spends years developing? Will our future Windows disks be 1 part Windows, 3 parts software from all their competetors from all the different software niches?
Another possible solution would be to "inform" users at install that there are these other media players available, and can be found at these URL's... but of course users will say "Whatever. I can just click this check box right here and install WMP here and now"
As much as I am against a monopoly, I really don't see an easy solution to the problem. There are so many questions that need to be answered before we can find a solution.
People expect to have media players, web browsers, or whatever monopoly issue we are discussing, ready and working when they take the computer out of the box. And I'll tell you what, if RealSpy, err... RealPlayer ever comes default installed on any of my OEM Windows disks, I'm gonna be pissed.
From the broadcast/NLE side of the fence:
...
Part of the problem here is that there is no universal video codec standard. This is very different from, say, the telecom or satellite industry, which has organizations like the ITU to enable global communication standards for phone service or video teleconferencing (thus the ubiquitous G.711, H.264, T.120 standards, etc.). MPEG-4 has been pushed as the closest thing to a universal streaming standard, but there's a much larger piece of pie out there than streaming, and that's where the real fight lies.
Win Media 9 is attempting to compete with higher-level MPEG encoding used in broadcast applications (DigiBeta, IMX, D1/D5/D9, DVCPro 25/50/100), which traditionally have been the realm exclusively of Sony, Matsushita (Panasonic), and JVC. Now, Win Media is nowhere near good enough to transmit SDI (serial digital interface, which ops at 270/360 Mbps for SD up to 1.45 Gbps for HD) -- yet. But I assure you that those busy little bees up there in Redmond are working their asses off to develop a codec that will begin to compete with the big boys. And already you're starting to see all three broadcast manufacturers (and the fourth, Thomson/Grass Valley) offer streaming from cameras and switchers, in addtion to competing over the next generation of acquisition media. Any leg MS can get in the door in terms of developing a fully-accepted worldwide digital video standard will help it with the high-end fight -- which has a MUCH higher profit margin than the PC world.
The main reason I can see for MS offering VC-9 as open-source for the new HD-DVD standard is to begin to compete with Sony and Matsushita on tapeless acquisition, ie, recording to DVDs/CDs/opticals/hard disks, both at the professional and the consumer level. (Licensing for this is extremely profitable.) And VC-9 is visually very, very similar to Media 9, although their internal mechanisms are obviously very different. It's not too far down the line when you will probably find broadcast-studios-in-a-box running a Windows OS with Win Media 15 or so bundled for all encoding. And if you think Real's raising a stink, wait'll you see what Sony throws at 'em when their most profitable line of business is threatened
Just my thoughts.
From the grandparent:
There you go! That wasn't that hard, now, was it?
Apple produces a *computer* which includes the operating system. It can include whatever components in that computer that it sees fit.
The argument is not unlike Sony having a monopoly on the volume dials they use in their stereos. They create the *entire* product so they dictate what goes in it. Apple is no different in this regard.
Regardless, Apple is not not a monopoly and therefore does not have to abide by the same rules as Microsoft. more to the point, Apple is not an ILLEGAL monopoly like Microsoft... so even MORE to the point... they don't have to abide by the same rules as Microsoft, but even if they were, because Apple creates the entire product, it can bundle whatever it sees fit into its computer unlike Microsoft's Windows which is one of several coments which make up a greater whole.
I don't know if it was your intention, but you just indicated what the problem is. Look at your assertion - you use WMV because "everybody has it" and to avoid the hassle of supporting other formats.
That is EXACTLY why Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to do what they are doing. Now it may seem silly to make them unbundle WMP. It wasn't a big deal before, but that was before multimedia over the internet was a real possibility. Now it is a huge business. They are leveraging their OS monopoly to enter and dominate other businesses.
Yours is exactly the attitude that they are banking on. Do you get it now?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
would be satisfied if I just could
a) choose not to install WMP, IE and other MS add-ons during Win installation and
b) remove them in the same manner as any third-party soft.
That sounds like a good solution to me: newbies would be able to have functionality out of the box ( yes, MS's products would still be defaults - but hey, MS makes the system after all, they should have a say-so what to include with their system ) and experienced users would be in position to use MS' competitors products.
<rant>
Why?? So they should compete for getting their software on the Windows CD now?? How do you get included? Marketing share? Bribes? Sex with Bill Gates?
Why not just do it like this:
They should also force them to make their software *uninstallable* like... well, their competing applications.
I'm fine with that. MS should be happy since they can include all their shit. They'll even get a separate CD and space to include More Junk Than Ever Before. Mozilla users will be happy because they can avoid IE, etc. Only problem here might be the feeling that you're paying for more than you'll use, but that's not a new problem at least. At least the situation would improve.
</rant>
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Microsoft is not a monopoly. Users are free to chose between any operating systems, for instance Mac OS X or Linux. It might be harder to get, but it's there for the users that want to make a conscious choice.
No they aren't free because of Microsoft's market dominance decides which programs are mainstream (usually those that run on Windows) or not. This has in turn a huge impact in the business. Maybe not in your room, but in the world in general.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Why not have Windows distributions?
Don't allow Microsoft to bundle any of its additional apps with Windows, but give other select distributors rights to bundle software in a Windows package.
You could then have those other distributors offering Windows with multiple browsers, e-mail clients, media players, etc.
I know that people will shriek "ARRGH! No! We don't want to have to choose from mass piles of media players, etc."
But what is the alternative? Microsoft forcing you to use the 'default' Microsoft software? Software which has file formats/codecs controlled by a convicted monopolist?
We already know that Microsoft is certainly not trustworthy. Not even trustworthy enough to distribute its own operating system. Damn, you can't even trust its damn patches.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
If the car is the end product then the parts of that car that make it work are core to the original design and cannot be substituted for other parts unless they are "standard" parts like tyres, wiper blades or the music system.
However, the manufacturer of the car has little impact on deciding "how you run" that car - so you can fill up from any petrol/gas station you wish, can use whatever breakdown service you require and you can drive the car safely and carefully or at speed.
Microsoft's attitude is to lock you into Windows and their products only - that's standard business practice. The fact is that they can afford to give some of those products away "freely" (like IE or WMP) while others cost money because of the size and complexity of those products (like MS Office). However, many of those products do not constitute the "operating system" and are designed into forcing you to use the computer in specific ways - i.e. force you into using specific file formats, force you into using specific keyboard and menu shortcuts, etc.
If you don't accept this, have a look at a lot of modern devices like routers, switches, telephony systems, set-top boxes - all of these run (frequently embedded) operating systems that provide the necessary functionality for the job that is required but due to size an memory constraints do not have redundant extra applications that never need to be used in those environments.
Added to this, why do you need to install extra redundant software for a PC that is going to act purely as a web server, for example? It could be argued that you don't even need a GUI for such a box.
The fact is that it is desktop users want programs like media players, browsers, office apps, etc., so it could be argued that Windows, OS X and Linux with KDE/Gnome are "desktop environments", not just operating systems. At the point a system becomes a desktop environment, then its usability is subject to what the user him/herself deems to be usable software - it is therefore reasonable to expect the user to have a choice in what he/she runs to perform a specific task.
I'm also "annoyed" at this term that several people here have used - "modern operating systems" and I would dearly like one of those people to define that term better.
I'm going to take an intuitive leap here and assume that those people mean "a GUI driven OS that has no reliance on the command line" when they talk about a "modern OS".
However, these same people fail to realise that the command line has the power of providing automation and scripting, something that most Linux & UNIX power users learn very quickly - even in a corporate Windows environment, command-line scripts get run to update software, add network shares, etc.
There is actually no such thing as a "modern OS". What there are are "good OSes" that allow the user or the administrator to customise the operating system to be as suitable and as easy as possible to use. With Windows, it's a Microsoft-orientated way of doing things that some people no doubt find acceptable while others prefer the UNIX/Linux methodology of very in-depth customisation.
But whichever method you use, the concept of the OS is the same - to provide a software platform that makes the hardware as easy to use as possible and lets you decide what applications you want to run on it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You may not want the alternatives, but the logic goes that its easier to uninstall an optional component than to download a wanted one.
Freedom to install competing software is only available to those with internet connections.
In truth, its good for you to have them all on there anyway - competition in media player services give the public more choice of suppliers of premium media, and this reduces both the ability of Microsoft to be a majority toll-gate provider of software solutions, and of those services using microsoft's WMA technology to monopolise the new market.
Competition is needed not just in provision of media services but in provision of software which enables it...
Competition in the end user market leads to lower prices, competition in the DRM media player software leads to higher quality srvices, as Apple, Real and Microsoft will be forced to invest more in making their software better.
As an end-user, even if you use your right to uninstall (preferably a right to uninstall windows media player) you will benefit from this.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
What about the other free players out there? Like BSPlayer, ZoomPlayer and others? If Microsoft had to include those, there would be options for people. And they should definitely have to include Apple QuickTime.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
However, you will feel good, because almost half of the class will have learned how to print a page from the internet. "Download"? You might as well have asked for the conversion factor between Teslas and Gauss. Now, with that information in hand, go to the Quicktime web site and try to get the latest plug-in that is needed.
Now, without looking back, close your eyes and try to spell "rediculous".
And not just from the board game.
/. will have posts questioning why $Company is allowed to bundle $Product while Microsoft can't? (Answer: MS is a convicted illegal monopolist)
/. will have posts comparing Microsoft could be forced to include $CompetitorsProduct while $Competitor should not be forced to include $OtherCompanies's $FoodProduct or $CartPart? (Answer: $Competitor is not a monopoly)
/. should make to posters before posting in monopoly related article is to understand what a monopoly is. It is not hard, people!
/.-ers are tired of this kind of repetitions too. How many times must it be said before some people understand?
How many more time
How many more time
One requirement
Mod me a troll or flamebait if you must, but I am pretty sure some
Media Player and IE are both light wrappers around standard Windows interfaces. Lots of software would break if you removed Windows audio or video playing interfaces, codecs used in lots of games and competing media players, or stuff like mshtml. Once you've got the application down to a hundred kilobytes of code to instantiate and call standard components, uninstalling it is pretty meaningless.
You can "uninstall" these programs, but you're really just removing icons. The uninstall even leaves the tiny executables in place. Very few people today care about that little space, and many more would be pissed off to discover that they accidentally installed something that they actually use.
Rubbish. Age alone has nothing to do with tech. proficiency. I'm almost 41 and understand what I do for a living (surprise: I work in IT and have been since quite a few /. readers were in their diapers).
I've seen people in their 30s and even this young 20-something chick who just could not wrap their brains around some concept that your average techie would take for granted. Only in the last 2 years have I really understood that The Tech Thing(tm) is not that "easy" for Joe Sixpack as it is for Suzie Programmer. Maybe we can understand/learn some newfangled computer/comms concepts in 10-15 min., but not your Average Joe that lives down the street, even if he/she is not a dolt.
IT can be like medicine, some people are knowledgeable about it, the rest might know this or that but not much more.
Actually, no. Microsoft is selling products for less than what COULD BE CHARGED. But since we all got fed up with those prices and started demanding more value for the money, they took care of it. Sure Linux is free beer/speech, but it hasn't been up to snuff for most peoples' needs. It's been "getting there" for a while though and I'm increasingly impressed with it as a desktop OS.
By the way - using your logic, shouldn't all free beer Linux distributions be illegal? I mean, it's dumping right? I don't think I'll hear you crying about "dumping" when (and if) a free beer Linux distro ever overtakes Microsoft Windows.
I can easily pay $80 for a CD burning program, but only the vendor of that particular product is going to tell you it's worth it. Any user who doesn't need best of breed features won't pay that much for a product until they do provide those features. In the meantime, Windows provides just enough to get by with.
As far as "people like me" go, I would like you to point out where I stated that Microsoft is killing the IT industry? Failing that (consider it failed), show that Microsoft is killing the IT industry? Failing that, at least show that the IT industry is somehow dying? Failing that, please don't bother. Your kind of rhetoric is flimsy, inflammatory, and not at all based on reason or fact. You may not LIKE Microsoft, but that really isn't relevant.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!