Opera Files EU Complaint Against Microsoft

A number of readers have sent word about Opera Software ASA's antitrust complaint against Microsoft filed with the EU. Here is Opera's press release on the filing. The company wants the EU to "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop" and to "require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." The latter request makes this a case to watch. Will the Commissioner take the Acid2 test using IE7?

Comments

Good PR for Opera

[Gothmolly]

Since no publicity is bad publicity, this is a cheap way for them to shout from the rooftops "We exist, we're a better browser than IE, IE sucks!! "

Oh, and their lawsuit has merit, as well.

Firefox, Opera, ...?

[kellyb9]

The easy solution rather then removing IE - why not just include two browsers on your operating system? I seriously think most users would like for the 'e' on their desktop regardless. I think a pretty interesting question would be: If MS was forced into removing their browser for some reason - what do you think they would bundle with their OS?

Re:I don't get it

[Sparks23]

Mac OS X does come with Safari bundled, yes. However, Safari and Konqueror are in many ways the same browser; both are based on the open source WebKit, and it is possible for a user to compile a new copy of WebKit and replace Safari. (Witness the nightly builds at the Surfin' Safari blog, for instance.)

The issue I have usually heard from a web-design standpoint is that Internet Explorer is the only pre-installed option on Windows (meaning many people never bother to switch to another browser), is not remotely standards compliant (meaning web designers have to do all kinds of fun workarounds for IE compatibility) and is not open source, so (unlike the Linux and OS X situations) industrious end-users cannot simply go in and fix any HTML/CSS standards compliance bugs in the default-browser-flavor themselves.

That's how I read the Opera suit, though admittedly only one possible interpretation... "either make your browser play nice with the rest of the world, or offer other default browsers that do."

Re:I don't get it

[mnoel2]

Apple bundle Safari, but it's trivial to remove in it's entirety (or simply not install)

Actually, Safari is just a UI on top of Web Kit -- remove Safari and you still have a /System/Library/WebKit.framework. If you tried to remove Web Kit, you'd find that many applications don't work anymore, including Open Source applications like Colloquy and Adium. Other apps use Web Kit in nonobvious ways, too. I remember when I was first learning Cocoa, I was taught that a poor man's way of supporting printing was to create an offscreen Web Kit view with an HTML template, and just create a PDF of it when you wanted to print. I know of one popular Carbon app that uses HIWebView for embedding a Web Kit view, because one particular text-heavy view in the app is easier to manipulate using HTML and CSS, instead of custom Carbon HIObjects. As final example, I believe Apple's help system is entirely based on Web Kit.

Apple and Microsoft are obviously two different stories -- Microsoft has a monopoly influence on the market, and Apple does not, so Apple can get away with feats of bundling that Microsoft can only dream about. However, given the myriad ways third party developers, on both Windows and the Mac, rely on built-in HTML rendering engines, I'd be hesitant to remove those facilities from the standard libraries.

Standards compliance, though? I'm all over anyway to force the IE folks into that.

Re:I'm not sure this case is a good thing at all

[Poingggg]

I would be very disturbed if the standards element of the lawsuit (assuming the summary given is accurate) gets anywhere. That would imply that the recommendation of a group of unelected people in a self-appointed standards body can legally compel an organisation with 80+% market share to change anything about how its wildly successful product works to benefit inferior (according to the market) competitors. What legal or ethical basis is there for such compulsion?

If the 80% marketshare of a totally inferior product is made by screwing up open standards to closed, one-'browser'-only-usable ones, thus pushing other browsers out of the market by including this inferior product in a monopolised OS, I think I can see the unethical part of this.

If Microsoft would have kept to standards and then got an 80% marketshare, in a honest competition with the rest of the market, it would be a totally different story. It is not as if MS had a big marketshare and someone came up with altered standards to thwart them, but the standards were there before MS decided to alter them for their own purposes and made it impossible for others to use their (MS's) 'standards'.

Disclaimer: I am not a web-developer, and don't even play one on tv.