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EU Launches Yet Another Antitrust Probe Into Microsoft
Connor writes "The EU has announced a new wide-ranging antitrust probe into Microsoft's practices of bundling software with Windows, as well as whether its products interoperate sufficiently with competitors' products. 'The first area of investigation will concern interoperability of some of Microsoft's products, including Office 2007, the .NET Framework, and some of Microsoft's server products.' The other prong of the investigation is a response to Opera's antitrust complaint, but will look at other products, too. 'The Commission will also look at desktop search and Windows Live as well in addition to other products. The EC says that its investigation will "focus on allegations that a range of products have been unlawfully tied to sales of Microsoft's dominant operating system."'"
Can anybody tell me what MS has actually been forced to do as a result of anti-trust lawsuits? I don't mean what they have been told to do but rather what they were forced to follow through with. IIRC, they still haven't paid a hefty fine imposed by the EU a long time ago.
I normally am happy when bad things happen to Microsoft, but I was Antitrust-Probed by aliens once, and I know how it can feel.
Microsoft has a bit of a juggling act to do. On one hand, they're bound to make the maximum possible profit for their investors as a corporation. On the other side, they have to do so in a way that keeps various governments off their backs, and keeps from being -overtly- anti-competitive--because, let's face it, the maximum possible profit will be made by M$ being a monopoly.
I do rather wish, though, that it was the QC department rather than the legal department that got all the funding for these ventures; the strategy of 'sue everyone and who cares about the product' didn't seem to work too well for SCO, and with the rather notable--especially in Europe--rejection of Vista, M$ would do well to take note of the problems with their product. Legal muscle and dominance of the marketplace will take you far, but such things are no excuse for honest innovation (or, if you can't do it honestly, buying it or stealing it from someone else--anyone heard of any actual production plans for those nifty tabletop computers from a few months back yet?)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
"Could it be that they were designed for eachother?" Yes, it could be. It could also be that they design software in a way that unlawfully or unethically discourages the use of other software. Lets see what they find out during the investigation. Microsoft is a powerful company, and as such, just like powerful politicians, they should be under constant investigation.
Don't be crazy anymore!
How long is it going to be before Bush sends US diplomats to intervene on Microsoft's behalf again?
I think people are so use to the past decade of Microsoft getting away with pretty much anything they wanted and effectively walking away from any legal or government intervention that it is hard to grasp that that is no longer the case. Microsoft is getting a lesson right now from the EU like someone who just got pulled over for a speeding ticket and speeds off and gets pulled over again. The fact that you just got pulled over a few minutes ago means absolutely nothing.
There is a certain, and strange, Microsoft fanbase that is roughly of the mindset of "Microsoft is always teh winner". They might not even like Microsoft products but somehow identify with the company as somehow being badass and that "Bill Gates will just buy his way out of this with pocketchange LOL!" type sentiments.
Tough times ahead for that crowd. Look for much crying about how life isn't fair from them.
This is just great! If we get Internet Explorer, Windows Mediaplayer, Windows shell (GUI) and few others ripped off from Operating System, we would get a great platform.
No, this dont mean that Microsoft could not sell them or develope those. Just that those users who dont need a Microsoft own webbrowser or a WMP. Can remove them. OEM manufactures can install Opera or Firefox or OTHER webbrowser instead IE and VLC or any other mediaplayer instead of WMP.
How many remembers what is definition of Operating System?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
"An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. An operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the system. At the foundation of all system software, an operating system performs basic tasks such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing system requests, controlling input and output devices, facilitating networking and managing file systems. Most operating systems come with an application that provides a user interface for managing the operating system, such as a command line interpreter or graphical user interface. The operating system forms a platform for other system software and for application software."
And what we have left if we remove all applications what dosn't remove any of these definition parts? Just pure OS.
It would be much better if a Microsoft would become as two corporation, other to build and sell basic OS and other to sell all other software like WMP, IE, Office, Games, Outlook etc etc. Together user could get windows as it is now and every one would be happy.
And those who needs just windows OS, would get Operating System and nothing more. They could install just their games to it or software what are needed and use computer happily.
Not to mention their attempts to squeeze the life out of open formats like ODF.
Also, it shows the EU has the balls to stand up to MS and their anti competitive practices, something the US has been unable to do for a while.
> Does anyone else think enough is enough?
They have laws and they try to force everyone to obey those laws. Every time Microsoft has done something that would be illegal in most countries, it itself has said that it will obey the laws of the place where it operates. So Microsoft should be quite happy with this. EU is just helping them to obey the laws.
Microsoft has a lot of business and they might have broken several laws. Should rest of these crimes be forgotten simply because they were already judged?
I have no doubt that EU will handle the issues professionally and Microsoft will only get what it deserves. If they have done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about.
My blog
I dont get this whole idea that including applications with your OS is somehow evil. There are certain things that the average user expects to be able to do with a PC out of the box. Things like browsing the internet, playing a media file, etc.
(warning car analogy ahead)
It is kind of like telling auto manufacturers that they cannot include built in AC, CD player, or any other ameneties with their cars because it kills the third party market even though these are things that consumers expect to come with their cars.
In the 50's, 60's and 70's IBM was repeatedly beat up on by antitrust people. The result was IBM couldn't ship a computer with an operating system pre installed. It didn't really mean that the computer wouldn't have an IBM operating system (since no one had a viable alternative available), it ment you had to buy the OS seperately. This practice continued into the era of the PC. Early IBM PCs were sold naked. This gave Microsoft the opportunity to sell MS DOS instead of the IBM labeled version of MS DOS. IBM's competitiors were able to sell computers with OS's installed but not IBM. Eventually this was changed, but not until IBM had been critically wounded in the market they created.
Microsoft may face the same future. They may be forced to sell a naked OS while their competitors will be selling an OS with lots of goodies bundled.
Is this a good thing? Who knows. Personally I think it may be a good thing.
Microsoft is a monopoly. It's been operating as one for over a decade. It's been declared one even in the monopoly-friendly US for 7 years. I hasn't changed, and is even worse globally like in the EU. Its monopoly comes from bundling across the IT product line, extending even beyond software. Until it's broken into individual OS, app, development, network, content and hardware corporations which don't make preferential deals with each other instead of with any other competitor to each other, it will operate as a market abusing monopoly. Why shouldn't it? And why should the EU put up with that, when Microsoft isn't even an EU corporation?
I just saved the EU a lot of money. Now, if they skip the probe and start barring monopolies like Microsoft at least from doing business with the EU governments, they might actually save the EU's people some money, and get some better products out of a more actually competitive environment.
--
make install -not war
This is ironic because one of my bigger gripes about Windows is that it does not bundle *enough* software. And the software/utilities they do include are generally subpar, IMO. I usually have to spend a few hours gathering all the little pieces of software that I need for Windows to be generally useful as a base. Need a PDF reader, PDF writer (print to PDF), better archive file handling, CD/DVD burning, updated drivers, telnet/ssh client that DOESN'T feel like it was coded in 1986 and never updated, etc. A lot of it has to do with XP being so damn old, of course, but even back when it was released the bundled utilities were mostly useless. OS X (and Linux to a greater degree for obvious reasons), on the other hand, comes almost completely ready for general use (minus major apps like Adobe Suite) out of the box. I hardly have to download anything to get OS X going. And then there's iLife, which I don't use.
I wonder if/when governments are going to start going after Apple. OS X is 10x "worse" than Windows when it comes to bundled software. I use "worse" lightly, of course, because I actually want bundled software.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
This is a ridiculous statement. Cars used to be separate from air conditioning too; people used to have to add a window evaporative cooler to their coupe back in the forties. Just try convincing the majority of people that cars don't need air conditioning! (If you go back even farther, cars used to regularly come without heaters, too, so we can do this all day...
EVERYONE uses a web browser as an OS component today. No, really! Sun has been doing HTML documentation for a long, long time; they used to bundle Netscape 2 for the purpose of reading it (and websurfing.) Microsoft, of course, has been doing it since they integrated Aieee! Apple, naturally, uses HTML fairly liberally.
Naturally, no one else uses it to the extent that Microsoft does, to the point where folder views contain HTML. But why should Microsoft not be permitted to do this?
Microsoft bundling IE wasn't the problem. Microsoft forbidding their customers (OEMs) to bundle other web browsers (and other competing products) was. Your statements make it clear that you do not understand the problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Economic strength is reason that the United States it the world super power; military is over-rated and a result of economic strength. American assets are priced in US dollars and as the dollar drops so does the value of the country. Additionally, a huge amount of America's debt is owed in foreign currency and as the dollar drops the debt's value increases proportionally; again making America poorer and therefore weaker. Also, as the dollar's value drops against world currencies (particularly the Euro) foreign reserves are switch from being dollar based to being Euro based; again diminishing the economic might and influence of the United States.
At this point in time the US is so dramically richer than any other state in the world that it doesn't really matter - how ever over the next decade we're likely to see the rise of two new super powers that rival the Unites States: European Union (the confused, sluggish super power) and China (the unified and aggressive super power).
The last time we saw the Unites States challenged it was by the USSR and Japan. The USSR was fundamentally flawed by actually being a totalitarian state which are inherently flawed over the long run. Japan wasn't as flawed, but it inflexible work force (worse than Europe's) has severely limited its ability to compete. In both cases the US system simply out spent and maneuvered them. I don't think the US will be able to do this again unless China's one-child laws begin to damage their economy with the upcoming population drop and Europe's reformist governments get voted out.
As for the article and topic on hand: good. M$ needs to be pushed to be competitive and not just handicapped by overly relying on their OS monopoly. Their censure by the EU will only work to improve the US economy (in the long run) and the EU consumer. Kudos to the EU for having the balls to do this and showing up the US government.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Damn, does the FUD never end? A small search on Google demonstrates that the EU fines domesitc industries at least as much as foreign ones (I read the official numbers ones, can't find the source now, but most 'income' was from domestic corporations). Just because Spanish Telecom, Fujifilm and Siemens don't reach the/your news, doesn't mean they're fined hundreds of millions of euros.
None of your points relate to the monopoly status of Microsoft. If there were valid competition, i.e. vendors *had* to work with standards because those who did not would LOSE business.
Microsoft's monopoly control makes it bad. With greater than 90% of the personal computer market, it does not need to work with others in order to continue to do business. In fact, the normal feedback processes of capitalism are inverted with monopolies. To maintain their position they must push against a level playing field.
The argument "no one forced" the purchase of Microsoft products is patently and provably false. Go to Best Buy or Staples and buy a P.C. laptop without Windows. Just go ahead and try. The barriers put in the way are amazing.
Comcast won't support you on a P.C. if you don't use Windows, so you are forced to have a version of Windows in order to get support.
coercion is a form of force.
Instead they're abusing their position and holding the industry back. I think every web developer on the planet would like to see them get a kick up the backside . It would make a change from swearing at them in CSS/HTML/JS comments.
The bundling issue I'm more ambivalent about; making them unbundle WMP didn't exactly achieve much, but perhaps the processes surrounding it were more valuable than the unbundling itself. Still, I hardly agree it's got anything to do with Opera wanting a "handout", whatever the fuck that means.
This is NOT AT ALL the argument used against Microsoft, and I wish you would pay a little more attention. You are clearly an unreasoning Microsoft-hater. I am a reasoning Microsoft-hater, but I won't talk about why I hate them right now, only about why trying to claim that they should not be able to bundle IE is stupid.
First of all, your assertion that you can simply remove Firefox from Ubuntu Desktop is incorrect. Oh, you can remove it... but you must remove the package 'ubuntu-desktop', which depends on firefox! This will result in autoremoval of a lot of other packages (if you are doing autoremoval) and the failure to track some updates to ubuntu.
Second of all, Microsoft does not force you to use Internet Explorer for anything but HTML help and where it is embedded into applications. You can turn off web folder view. Of course, you still have to use IE to use Windows Update, but frankly, that is an entirely reasonable restriction.
Third, it is actually possible to embed gecko in the place of IE, although some applications will crap on it. The fact that they do not work the same in all situations is reason enough for Microsoft not to make it too easy to do that - they do not go out of their way to make it difficult.
Your main complaint seems to be that having IE on your system makes it potentially less secure. But making an insecure OS is not (yet?) a crime.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO REPLACE IE WITH ANOTHER BROWSER. It is possible to trap the loading of the embedded IE component and load embedded gecko instead. I have personally patched applications to do this (I don't know if the patcher is still around and/or still works, though) and had them work. However, that browser must behave just as IE does! Similarly, it is possible to replace any and all air conditioning components in any car with those from any other car, but if you expect them to work properly they must work the same way the originals did. This is no different from IE in windows! The car manufacturer does not tell you what you need to know in order to change compressors, either. They do not tell you what the bracket bolt pattern is, so that you can have another fabricated. They don't tell you what the belt thickness is. You have to figure these things out for yourself if you want to alter the system. They don't go out of their way to stop you, although they WILL void your warranty if you start tampering with things!
So basically, you have utterly failed to show any way in which Microsoft can reasonably be restricted from bundling their own software. Once again, the problem was never that they bundled their own software, but that they forbade OEMs to bundle ANOTHER web browser, remove any icons that their install process created, et cetera. THIS was the anticompetitive behavior. Part of the legal response against microsoft was to force them to unbundle certain applications, as a punitive measure. It was not because it was felt that bundling was wrong, but that it was felt that microsoft was not responsible enough to bundle. The truth was VERY different; the right that Microsoft cannot handle is having a monopoly position and being in a position to dicate terms to OEMs. If Microsoft was going to be prohibited from doing something, it should have been one of these things. The USDOJ should have broken Microsoft up into pieces when it had the chance, but as you probably know, the Bush administration effectively pardoned Microsoft by way of Ashcroft.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your analogy (like most that will be presented in this article) is flawed because it does not include a monopoly for one of the markets. No one has a monopoly on cars or on air conditioners or people might feel very differently about it. As a result of this, the AC market is not broken so people have no incentive to want change. If there was a single monopolist on cars and AC cost $5000 dollars per car and released a gas that broke other car add ons not from the car maker, then you might have an accurate analogy.
As for convincing people, why would you have to? This isn't about stopping OEMs from bundling IE it is about stopping Microsoft. By your analogy, antitrust law wouldn't stop the car dealership from installing AC into all the cars they sell, even AC made by the car manufacturer. It just stops the car maker from forcing car dealers to buy their AC regardless of which is the best deal or works best.
Naturally, no one else uses it to the extent that Microsoft does, to the point where folder views contain HTML. But why should Microsoft not be permitted to do this?Am I the only one who stayed awake for my Econ 101 class? MS has monopoly influence on the desktop OS market. When they bundle a borwser with their OS, they break the Web browser market such that regardless of which browser is best, most people use IE. This is illegal in both the US and EU because it undermines the market. As a result of this behavior on the part of MS, Web technologies have been held back nearly a decade and the Web has been intentionally crippled to keep it from becoming a way to bypass MS's OS. At the same time, consumers have been deprived of the opportunity to use the best browser (most not knowing how to find and install other browsers).
Microsoft bundling IE wasn't the problem.This is simply not true. Bundling is a form of tying, explicitly described in antitrust law. Bundling a Web browser with any other product on which they have a monopoly is sufficient to violate antitrust law. I know most people don't want that to be the case, but it doesn't change matters at all.
And I will tell you exactly why I think so. Microsoft releases a retail version of Windows. Included in this retail version of Windows is Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer.
.doc format. -- What choice are you talking about?
Number 1. Both of these are FREE PROGRAMS. You can download any version of IE and WMP for free directly from Microsoft (and yes, I am aware they don't retain older versions for downloading). You won't see Internet Explorer or WMP sitting on Best Buy's shelves.
Those programs are "free"? I mean, can I legally install in my Linux box and run under Wine?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIR and according to the EULA, starting from IE5 or IE6 you are allowed to install IE only into MS Windows.
Number 3. Those who don't know any better obviously don't care that they come included...and if they do care, they will do the research required to download and use something else.
Well, most do not care, no matter how badly trapped they are (or will be) in MS technology.
The problem is that there are people who care, and that people is being artifficially being prevented to use (or use properly) the technology they prefer because MS do not follow standards as they should.
Number 4. LINUX AND OSX!!!! It's not like Windows is the only game in town...it is perhaps for gaming, but that is not Microsoft's fault...you wouldn't try to sue Sony because your PS3 can't play an Amiga game, would you?
All I'm saying is that this is complete and utter stupidity. People that use windows don't care that they are using windows. If they care enough that they are using windows, they will look at what the other alternatives are. "But...but...but...I HAVE to use office, it's what my job uses!" That's your company's fault for using Microsoft products...no one forced them to. Just like no one has forced you to use Microsoft products.
Are you a hermit?
I ask this because, if you're not, it means you must be able to exchange information with the rest of society.
The moment you graduate and start looking for a job (you need such thing in order to be able to afford things like.. food, for example) you will be asked (or expected), most of the time, to send your CV in
About that regrettable Amiga (a great machine in its time BTW) comment of yours, I can say this: Today is not the 1980s and interoperability is not a luxury, it's an expected thing from technology.
that is microsoft design.
Taking your car analogy for a moment. Internet explorer is like the display engine for 80% of the in dash LCD systems, without it your car will run, but you won't be able to tell what your tac is doing, how much gas you have or how fast you're going.
Truly, without Internet explorer, you can't use windows explorer (without modifications anyways) the two are linked in the most godawful way humanly possible. The bar along the right, with all the crap options, the search feature with the puppy dog, all that crap is embedded IE.
Not to mention 90% of the crappy third party applications that render HTML were probably made in Visual Studio, which Microsoft has kindly included about a billion ways to embed IE with.
Here's a top five list of IE dependent 'critical' software on my work machine:
1. Outlook
2. Explorer shell (search)
3. IBM Update Utility
4. Windows Update (wuauctl)
5. IPCheck Client Utility
No doubt there are gobs more, I'm sure my corporate installed patching utility uses IE calls to download patches and lots of other crap like that...
There was a point where you could break the executable from opening, but even so unless you can find some way to get rid of the DLL, and associated calls for them every 10 seconds by some random app. even attempting to pull IE out of windows is a real pain (reboot in recovery console/bartpe delete DLLs etc.) all so you can have an OS that is totally crippled...
Opera complained that IE implements standards so badly that it made many web designers code to IE's broken renderer instead of using the standards everyone else uses. If IE wasn't bundled with the OS that broken renderer would have murdered its marketshare long ago.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
opera is a norwegian company. norway is not a part of the eu
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Sigh, not again. How many bloody times do I have to explain it. Antitrust law makes bundling a monopolized product with a product in another market. The US, EU and several other jurisdictions have already convicted MS of abusing their monopoly in the desktop OS market, thus they legally have a monopoly in the desktop OS market. They bundled IE with that monopolized product. This is the same as someone with a monopoly in the car business bundling car accessories.
Except that, once again, this wasn't the real problem. Microsoft was come down on not because the bundled a browser, but because they forced OEMs to not bundle other browsers. Which, again, was caused primarily by Microsoft refusing to allow OEMs to bundle other browsers - not even instead of IE, but in addition to it.That's just exacerbating the abuse. MS has already been convicted of bundling IE, which is illegal all by itself.
Bundling is not tying, because force is absent.Bundling is the very first example of tying listed in US antitrust law and is the most common form of antitrust abuse prosecuted. Please learn the facts rather than arguing what you wish was true.
Bundling is not tying in the absence of pricing that prevents sales by an equally efficient competitor.MS sells a bundle which includes both Windows and IE. Some of that money goes to develop IE. Users don't have the option of buying just Windows for a price that is lower than the bundle. Thus, users are forced to buy IE, rather than saving that money and buying a competing offering.
Monopoly leverage, using a monopoly to try to gain a monopoly in another area, is also not a violation of the Sherman act;No it is a violation of the Clayton act. MS has already been convicted by the US on this count, how can you claim it isn't illegal?
The only web browser-producing "competitor" to Microsoft whose efficiency (in that market alone, naturally) even approached Microsoft's was Netscape, and they were giving the browser away. Thus, no sales were prevented.Wrong, direct sales are not the only way to cause financial harm. For example, Firefox is paid for directing users to Google. They are paid less because of MS's actions using their monopoly to push IE.
In fact, Netscape was dumping their product on the market, by giving it away at a price substantially lower than the production cost, in order to gain purchase against IE.It doesn't matter because Netscape didn't have a monopoly and aren't relevant. This is about what MS is doing today to affect the market.
Sigh, you are the worst MS apologist ever. You'll take any farfetched claim and make it, regardless of the facts. Sad.
European Union (the confused, sluggish super power) and China (the unified and aggressive super power).
Beeing European and living in the so called European capital: Brussels. I can assure you that the European Union won't become a super power anytime soon.
The European union is a bunch of independant states with strictly no common foreign policy and a real difficulty to define even the most basic common interest & strategy.Part of this mess are countries live with grandiose illusions (Uk, France), others with a difficulty to accept themselves (Germany), lost in domestic affairs (Italy, Belgium,Spain), eager to enjoy their hard won independance (Poland), focus on regional conflict (Greece), or simply not interested (Netherlands, Denmark, etc).
When I see the current trends, I don't see any European common foreign policy in a reasonnable future.
What would worry me if I was American would be: China and Russia in some ways...India in the long term, the rest (particularly Europe) is sleeping.
I would bet money that WMP doesn't [work with Macs].
You lose: Windows media components for Mac
Besides, I haven't seen any signs recently that the EU is at all impressed by the US opinion in this matter since it demonstrably operates well within the WTO framework.
Last but not least ... the US has enough troubles of its own to head for a trade war with its largest trade partner in the world. And just about the only major one with which, by the way, doesn't have a massive deficit.
So no. The EU might see some grumblings from the US, but it need't worry about any follow-up action. The EU is free to apply its fair-competition laws to Microsoft and there will be no-one in Washington willing to risk even a luncheon voucher to help Microsoft out.
So Microsoft just might just find that it's cheapest for them to play fair for a change.
In other news, the European Union is launching an investigation into the monopoly that smart people have on the job market. According to recent statistics, 90% of employees in the technology industry have IQs over 100, while less than 2% have IQs less than 80. According to the complaint filed by the representatives for the mentally challenged, smart people continually engage in anticompetitive behavior to keep the mentally challenged out of the job market. Of particular note is the amount of bundling that most smart people force on their employers; it is common for a smart person to be able to communicate effectively, write complete sentences, perform multiple job functions and assist others on the job. Additionally, smart people continually refuse to work with those less intelligent, monopolizing even the hiring process to do so, instead of remaining interoperable with them.
European commissioner Neelie Kroes has expressed deep anger at smart people's obvious monopolization of the job market and abuse of that monopoly to keep the mentally challenged from being hired. She has vowed to investigate and take whatever action is necessary to reduce smart people's stranglehold on competition, including both fines and the prescription of neuroinhibitors to put them on an equal footing with the mentally challenged. She then said that success would be when less than 50% of the world's employees had IQ's greater than 100.
1. DirectX was made to pull people away from OpenGL which makes games MUCH harder to port. To accomplish making people use DirectX, the made Microsoft make the DirectX tools much better and more complete than using OpenGL-mabobs.
2. Microsoft bought the last great Mac Developer Bungie.
3. The Xbox was originally made to funnel developers to Windows.
4. I hate lists that I can't think of more than three things.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
So far as I know, only a few browsers are completely standards compliant.
No, I doubt any browser is, but have you ever done any Web development? If you create pages based upon the standards and then test 99% of the time it will work just fine in every browser except IE, where it never works. MS doesn't even try and the leaked internal e-mails show that this is intentional.
...with the announcement that IE 8 should be ACID 2 compliant, that argument starts to fail. Should IE be allowed to be bundled if it passes that test?
You're completely misconstruing what the ACID-2 test is. It is not a general compliance test for Web standards. It is an edge case test, meant to be used to see if a compliant browser correctly handles some weird cases and handles broken content according to the standard for how broken things are to be handled. One can easily create a browser which passes the ACID-2 test but which fails on a large percentage of common, standards compliant pages. It was not designed to "prove" you follow standards but to help browser developers test some parts of the standard that were often broken even on largely compliant browsers.
Even if IE 8 were to conform to standards in every way, that is no guarantee that MS won't intentionally break them again in IE 9 and does nothing to redress the damage they've done in the intervening decade.
Should IE be allowed to be bundled if it passes that test? If not, then why?
No. Because the Acid-2 test is not comprehensive compliance test. Also because compliance is not the only factor in which browsers are different. Imagine for a moment IE 5 had been completely compliant, and bundled. It still doesn't have tabs and is inferior in many ways (no tabs, no spellcheck, no ad blocker) to other, competing browsers, but it still would dominate that market. When an inferior product wins market share over a superior one, just because it is bundled with something monopolized, that market is broken. It isn't fair to consumers or other browser developers.
Forcing MS to comply with standards and forcing them to unbundle IE would be about the minimum it would take to level the playing field again.
Because a browser should be considered an after market add on?
Because there was an existing, healthy market for that product before MS introduced their bundled product. That's the law. MS knew it before they broke the law, but they gambled that they'd make more money breaking the law and paying the fines than they would complying... and so far they've been right. Breaking the law pays, because US politicians are easily and legally bribed via lobbying.
Please! Browsers are as integral to computing now as anything else is.
Which is why it is important to make sure the market is a healthy, capitalist free market that rewards innovation. How exactly would removing IE from Windows be unfair? People can still download it if they want. OEMs like Dell can still pre-install it if they want. All it does is level the playing field so that IE has to compete based upon how good it is, not upon the fact that Microsoft also makes Windows and can abuse that fact. Really, if IE is a good product, it will retain its market share. If it sucks, it will lose market share... just like every other product. This not only rewards other companies, but gives MS incentive to make IE better. How can you have a problem with that?
However, the majority of stories coming out of the EU regarding monopoly investigations pertains to MS.
MS is the most prodigious antitrust abuser since Bell. The EU is also investigating Apple for their iPod tie ins and dozens of other companies we've never heard of because we don't pay attention to those markets. Any competent economist will tell you the only way to fix MS's absurd amount of abuse is to break them up, but the EU has treated them with k
Microsoft are not getting busted for merely including these programs with Windows. That's only one half of it.
The other half is that the web browser bundled with Windows does not follow "fundamental and open" standards for how web browsers render pages. Essentially, Microsoft is getting busted for trying to subvert the commonly accepted web standards and replace them with proprietary IE-style web standards.
Same goes for the Office file interoperability, although that seems to not be mentioned in the ars technia article, but is mentioned in this one.
Microsoft has had to license a mass of proprietary protocol documentation.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
I really think it would have been better for Microsoft as a company if the DOJ had broken them up. As it is today everthing in the office automation, information processing, and home entertainment spaces that can be done with a computer(or network of small computing devices) pretty much as been or has been at least talked about. Those are Microsofts core spaces.
Microsoft can no longer do anything without the specture of Anti-trust law looming. I think its caused them a great deal of uncertainty in terms of product roadmap and generally taken away from their focus. The only products of theirs that seem to be improving are Exchange and Windows Server itself which are becoming functionally more like the Unix and VMS systems that inspired them in the first place. They are certainly not doin anything new; because their ain't much new to do, and skipping logical points of intergation to avoid stepping on toes that might go crying to the DOA.
Don't get me wrong I hate what Microsoft has done to the industry as much as the next Slashdoter. I also think two or three Microsofts would more then likely suck all the oxygen out room just as much as the one monolith does; but at least we might see some real progress.
Over the last six to eight years we have gotten just about exactly nothing from Microsoft of real value. Oh and don't say DotNet was inovative. It took Microsoft two years to figure out what DotNet was themselves and its not new either. Sandboxed byte code interpreters existed already; JAVA as well as others. Ok so Microsoft made some more compilers for other languagues targeting their byte code. Big deal its was an obvious move, anyone wanting to invest the man hours could have done the same thing with Java; and if nobody had well CPUs have gotten fast. Pure interpreters would have filled the space.
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lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
I'm not saying that MS was not guilty of antitrust violations. I am asking though what are the merits of the new accusation? Is it the same accusation, or is it different?
One of the charges is the same thing MS was convicted of in the US, but has not been charged with in the EU. Previously the EU convicted them of abuse in the server OS market and audio player software markets. They are now looking into web browsers (which they've been convicted of in the US) and other, unnamed markets.
Frankly, the market has change SIGNIFICANTLY, for better or worse, than it was in the mid 90's. Consumers expect browsers included in the OS.
Back in the day, consumers expected to have to rent a standardized, rotary phone from the phone company, not to be able to buy any phone from the store. It has nothing to do with what is legal or best for the market.
Yes, OEMs should be able to include other browsers with their systems.
Sorry, not good enough. OEMs need to consider MS's software on an even playing field with other software, with no incentive to include o not include it other than the merits of the software. The market needs to be a level playing field for everyone, or the law is being broken. OEMs should include or not include IE because they think their customers will prefer it based on its merits, not based upon artificial problems introduced into competitors (broken standards in use). If IE is included, OEMs may simply leave it and not bother making the choice and consumers will suffer and developers will still target IE because they know it will be included, while they don't know if a different browser will be. They have to bundle all of them or none of them or the market will still be broken.
it's hard to argue that with competitors doing well in the EU: adoption of FireFox ranges from 20 - 40% in some member countries
Yes, and a lot worse in other EU countries. So you consider say 30% market share, versus 60% market share when the one with 30% is faster, has dozens of features the other lacks, is more secure, and properly reads pages while IE does not, and has been that way for many years. I'd say when it takes MS six years to implement something as simple and widely acclaimed as tabbed browsing windows, that competitors are not doing well to have only 30% of the market (and that 30% is pretty generous).
If Opera were doing as well, I would imagine that they wouldn't complain.
You completely mistake Opera's market. Opera makes most of their money selling an embedded browser of phones and the like. They sell fewer browsers because they can't handle all the pages broken to work with IE and can prove that in court. They do fairly well in that space, but are still losing largely to embedded IE based upon artificial problems, not real problems with their browser.
If IE were really so abusive these days, would they have such viable competition?
All of their competition has to give away their browser just to enter the market since everyone is forced to pay for IE's development when they buy Windows. As it is, most of the big competitors were started by frustrated users as a way to get another option since no business felt entering the market against an abusive monopoly was worthwhile.
Can you tell me one good reason why MS should be able to force every windows machine to ship with IE, but the Firefox team and Opera can't force every Windows machine to ship with their products? MS does it simply because they have a monopoly and no one stops them from leveraging it. As a result, we all suffer. IE 7 still doesn't implement 8 year old standards every other browser has complied with basically forever. Moreover, there is evidence this is an intentional attempt to keep the Web itself crippled so that people can't bypass their desktop OS monopoly using web based apps. You don't see the Web itself being crippled and held bac
sudo apt-get remove iceweasel
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
iceweasel iceweasel-gnome-support
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 245 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 27.5MB disk space will be freed.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Consumer choice? So I can go into a high street PC store and choose what OS I want on my PC? That's news to me.