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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..
Europe's a pretty big place... if they lose it there, they might never see it again.
This is a special excite
This
(AP) Microsoft Corp, responding to the unbundling of Media Player from Windows, announced today a broad partnership with RJ Reynolds where a carton of some of RJ Reynold's famed brands, such as Camels, will be offered with Windows Longhorn for Home edition.
"We're excited about adding the Camel camel as one our of automated helpers.", said Microsoft President Steve Balmer. "For example, during a longer search, our Camel character will light up and ask a user to join in."
The Microsoft Longhorn RJ Reynolds edition is expected to be released world wide.
This is my sig.
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.
Browsers and media players *are* part of a modern operating system.
Rivals can simply include an operating system with their media players if they want to compete.
...for the users.
Because the ulitmate sin in anti-trust law is the use of a monopoly in one thing to try to move into another thing where there used to be competition.
Being forced to include third-party software is simply the punitive action to punish MS for a past misdeed and help the companies who were the victim of that cheating.
Since when is a media player a core component of an operating system?
Stop corporate
I make short films, and stream with windows media all the time. Everybody has it, and it's a lot less hassle then supporting all three formats.
By not including windows media player, it has less of a chance of becoming dominant, and most people don't want to configure and support Quicktime, Real, and Windows Media.
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.
with Corel being back in the word processing game, next thing we'll see is them demanding that MS remove notepad from windows because it competes with Word Perfect.
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.
I'm a FreeBSD user so I say this without bias...
if you are a FreeBSD user how can you say ANYTHING without bias?
Fact: BSD users are losing IQ points...
"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?
Because neither McDonalds nor Burger King has ever been ruled to have a monopoly in the fast food market, or even the hamburger market.
It's not illegal to obtain a monopoly. However, once you do have a monopoly, the rules change. You're not allowed to bundle your monopoly product with any other product that is in an area that does have competition. That's what Real is calling the foul over, and the EU seems to be agreeing with.
This doesn't appear to be some anti-American "let's hurt Microsoft" reasoning by the EU; their concerns seem very legitimate to me.
Instead 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.
Later, a future Service Pack will 'break' the competitors products.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
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.
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.
<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!
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
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".