Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Behind $12M Opera Settlement
An anonymous reader writes "According to CNET it has been confirmed that Microsoft is behind the $12 million dollar payment to Opera (speculated earlier here). The payment was to avoid legal action over interoperability issues with Opera's web browser and Microsoft's MSN portal.
On at least three separate occasions, Opera has accused Microsoft of deliberately breaking interoperability between its MSN Web portal and various versions of the Opera browser--charges that the software giant has repeatedly denied."
At least the one company that truly stands for browser innovation will have some more cash to spend on product development. Pity it's just a drop in the ocean to Microsoft though.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Microsoft business practices aside, I really, really hate the fact that IE development is at a standstill. Microsoft has said they won't release a new IE until Longhorn.
Meanwhile we have to kiss web standards goodbye to please 90% of the public using IE.
Amusingly there's a work-around under development called IE7, mentioned on Slashdot a while back.
But the fact is Microsoft is keeping us from adopting things like CSS2, PNG and SVG more than anything else.
.: Max Romantschuk
For a small company like Opera, the settlement is significant, I'd imagine. Not only did they get their main beef settled, they get a little cash infusion to boot.
But these snippets from the article
The deal marks the latest in a string of settlements from Microsoft, which is seeking to simplify its business by clearing up potentially damaging legal claims.
and
Microsoft has effectively abandoned significant browser development efforts.
make me wonder, what has Microsoft got up its collective sleeve? They cornered the browser market and now they'll give it up without a fight? Why should they make an effort to clean up their legal image when it didn't seem to phase them for such a long time?
I don't doubt that whatever they've got planned, history indicates it's probably part of a well thought out business or marketing plan. Other thoughts?
Nice to see opera getting some funding. It has never bothered me that opera displayed msn wrongly, tho it was obvious there was something going on with those style sheets
Settlements like this should not be kept secret. Even more so when publicly held companies are involved ... and fo damn sure when one of the companies has been found guilty of predatory practices.
Maybe MS's sentence should have included banning them from private deals and settlements.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Does this mean that Mozilla can now sue Microsoft because Windows Update only works with IE >= 5? When I try to access Windows Update using Mozilla 1.6, I get the following:
I suppose the last sentence is some concession to those of us who run non-IE browsers. However, the Microsoft Download Center won't tell you which updates you need. Apparently, only Windows Update can do that...
Nothing short of criminal prosecution, and jail sentences for Gates, Ballmer and a few others, will ever make these guys behave properly. They have a consistent track record.
The question now is this money is enough, if not for Microsoft to be punished, at least for Opera to repair the damage done.
Is 12M$ enough money for a company like Opera to reinvent themselves?
With the IE as the widespread browser, and with that money to take a break, IMHO Opera should think about opening other branches, maybe give a try to open source solutions.
DON'T PANIC
yeah, but the story is bullshit. For one, Microsoft have not admitted liability, they have just settled out of court
A little Norwegian company which poses no threat to Microsoft, and in fact builds it business on Microsoft products (Windows) claims they have targeted them. It's a non-story. On one occasion all non-IE browsers were locked out of MSN. This was quickly reversed, and certainly wasn't targeted at Opera.
On another occasion an incompetent programmer worked around a bug with margins on UL (instead of setting margin: 0 to give lists no margin, you had to do -30px to reset the default 30px margin to 0) - but the bug wasn't actually present in Opera, so the text was overlapping.
The stupid conspiracy theorists claim that the programmer who wrote the style sheet was somehow acting on company policy to 'get Opera'. I call bullshit on that. Microsoft is a big company - and even in my small company, my manager doesn't direct how I write my style sheets. I mean for fuck's sake! A simple coding error is treated as a big conspiracy.
Here's what Wikipedia says on the whole story:
In October 2001, the MSN web page was changed to lock out most non-Microsoft browsers, shortly after the launch of Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. According to initial statements by Microsoft, this was because other browsers did not support XHTML correctly, and users should therefore upgrade to its own Internet Explorer. This issue also affected other browsers in similar ways. Microsoft backed down after being confronted with proof showing that, if anything, other browsers were better at rendering XHTML than Internet Explorer.
In February 2003, Opera Software employees discovered that the MSN home page sent a different style sheet to Opera users than it sent to Internet Explorer. The style sheet sent to Opera users, a generic 'site.css', contained the style rule ul {margin: -2px 0px 0px -30px;}, which created a 30-pixel negative left margin, causing content to appear overlapping other content. The Internet Explorer style sheet did not contain this rule.
This gave the impression something was wrong with Opera. The Netscape 6 style sheet also specified the same -30px margin, to work around known bugs in that browser (bugs not present in Opera). This same code was present into the supposedly generic style sheet, which was served to Opera by a Javascript checking routine which specifically detected Opera. This was either a deliberate decision by a programmer to make Opera look bad, or was simply the action of someone who was aware of Opera's existence, but unaware of its CSS capabilities (which are in fact better than those of Internet Explorer), and hence chose to send the browser a generic (albeit badly coded) style sheet.
PS. Don't forget, for Microsoft it's quicker to pay $10 million and get them to go away than to even investigate. Lawyers are expensive, and if you think in every case settled 'justice' was done, you are incredibly naive.
If this is really Microsoft, why does everyone assume that this is about a single episode with a single site, rather than a pattern, when MS has been doing this for a long time? Or just the fact that a Microsoft spokesperson used the media to spread several blatant lies about Opera (the alleged lack of XHTML support, as well as other things)?
The comment you are linking to isn't really relevant since Microsoft haven't done this kind of thing against Opera only once. They have done it several times, and have also been spreading lies about Opera.
Maybe you should keep that in mind before jumping to conclusions.
Clever signature text goes here.
Let me put it this way: Eh?
Does this imply that for 1 out of 10 IE doesn't deliver content? Well, not that I'd wonder about that. It's M$ software after all...
tinfoil hat alert!
yes, IE is quite secure in M$-windows desktop/laptop browser dominance. besides Opera there are a few other browsers for computers...... but the cell phone/PDA market is still up in the air. M$ has their own OS for cell phones and PDAs, and if they can show people that Opera's offerings for devices doesn't work so well, it may help their case. Add to the fact that EVERY Verizon DSL customer is now considered an MSN subscriber their numbers are growing (on paper).
maybe i'm wrong, but unless it's something personal i would think Mozilla is still a bigger threat to IE than Opera in the PC realm. I would guess this is for some emerging market.... being cellphone/PDAs or some other embedded devices (cable boxes or whatever?).
What about accessibility laws? Do they apply only to government agencies, or can private/commercial websites be liable for gratuitously locking out a portion of the user population?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
You don't know what you are talking about. MSN was sending broken pages to Opera, while Opera was perfectly capable of displaying the pages served when it identified itself as IE.
What really sickens me is Opera gets almost half the settlement that Be, Inc. got (about $25 million).
Now compare the two offenses. Screwing up a few Microsoft webpages for Opera users, vs. destroying a company with anti-trust tactics, such as squashing deals between Be and other OEM's (see: Hitachi)... Christ I could go on, but it's too depressing. Long live MacOS and PalmOS NG.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Their money comes from bulk licenses sold to phone makers and similar. Not from consumer licenses.
Sure it would be nice if opera was a real contender on the PC market but how do you compete with a free product when quality is something only tiny percentage of customers understand? Even mozilla and its offspring is having a hardtime and they are free.
Also if you run multipl OS'es, having one single browser between them is awfully handy. I can't tell you how much more I swear at IE now that it is refusing to listen to my mouse movements whenever I am on a non-opera machine.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
which is a punishment for having done something wrong
No, it's not. It's a method of avoiding a lengthy trial. It's not an admission of guilt by any stretch of the imagination. Many companies settle because it's cheaper to do so than go to trial. My old employer would pretty much settle automatically on any lawsuit that was for under $20,000 because it would cost that much to just get their lawyers geared up. It's a relatively prudent business decision...do we pay $100,000 in order to avoid spending $20,000? MS made the same decsion..."It's impossible to prove we DIDN'T do something (the basis of all conspiracy theories), so do we spend millions and millions in court costs and negative advertising on a trial, or do we just give them $12M to go away?"
thank you anyway, U.S. Justice System, for ensuring that my rights as a consumer, and my ability to weild choice are protected in the browser marketplace
You really need to get a clue on how the justice system works before you start praising it. This is the biggest FLAW in the justice system. In order to stop these frivlous lawsuits, the law needs to change to protect corporations and individuals from them. Something along the lines of "If you bring suit, and lose, you're responsible for all the defendant's court and legal fees as well as punitive damages equal to thrice that amount" should do the trick. Then, companies like Opera will stop bringing suits against larger companies like Microsoft in the hopes of getting a settlement. They know MS will settle, they don't have to be right, or prove it in court. It's an easy $12M influx.
In this instance, Opera is the evil corporation manipulating the system for its own gain.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Hotmail now works in Opera, which it didn't before. Surprise, surprise.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Opera. Because friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer. Or Windows. Or anything else that comes from Redmond.
(Did I mention Opera works equally well on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS? It's a great piece of software. That's why I keep paying $40 (or however much it is) to put it on every computer I have, and I install the "free" (ad) version on every computer I set up for my friends and co-workers. And don't say you don't like the million billion toolbars it has. Just turn them all off and you've got a nice clean browser that renders all pages.)