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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?
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...
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 $10 million and get them to go away than to even investigate. Lawyers are expensive, and if you think in every case settled 'justice' was done, you are incredibly naive.
tinfoil hat alert!
yes, IE is quite secure in M$-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 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.
Hotmail now works in Opera, which it didn't before. Surprise, surprise.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.