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EU Antitrust Troubles Continue For Microsoft
Julie188 writes "Opera Software's year-old antitrust complaint against Microsoft took another step toward being vindicated, and the Oslo-based browser maker can't help crowing over the European Commission's decision. Opera had filed a complaint with the EC in December, 2007, contending that Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows violated antitrust rules. Yesterday, the EC sent a 'Statement of Objections (SO)' to Microsoft with a preliminary finding that bundling IE with Windows does indeed constitute an antitrust abuse. Microsoft has eight weeks to plead its case and change the EC's mind, an unlikely outcome if ever there was one. Opera's CEO said, 'On behalf of all Internet users, we commend the Commission for taking the next step towards restoring competition in a market that Microsoft has strangled for more than a decade.'"
Its hard to deny that MS has gotten where is has through quality or good practices. I hope the EU does what we should have, and slaps them hard on behalf of all the consumers and competitors they have swindled.
In all likelihood, Microsoft would not actually remove IE, they would just create a registry key that enabled or disabled the web browser functionality. Such a key might already exist, put in place just in case the US government demanded that they remove IE from Windows.
Palm trees and 8
They might be able to get away with obeying the court's decision (provided that is there decision...there's still time for Microsoft to bribe them like they did at ISO for OOXML) for every release of Windows from 7 onward. I somewhat doubt - unless the EU is really that hellbent on punishing Microsoft for all its evil deeds - that the order would be retroactive for all previous versions of the operating system.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
How is the average computer illiterate going to download a browser if Microsoft is not allowed to bundle one? Buy a disc?
IIRC the way Windows XP N was in Europe was that the user was presented with a choice of several non Microsoft media players at first run.
Nobody actually bought N (well, no OEMs, I'm sure a few people did out of principle). My guess is Microsoft tries to offer that as a combined product/SKU with the "no media player" editions and, failing that, it'll get it's own SKU.
The European Commission were the ones that actually got them to make "Windows N" without media player. And in that case I think MS could have actually left a few core "system-ish" files and still have met their requirements.
This time let's see a version of Windows that doesn't have MSHTML.DLL, SHDOCVW.DLL, or even WININET.DLL. Then perhaps developer finally will stop embedding IE or calling these files bypassing users choice of browser... Or perhaps not. Did Windows N actually ship to stores or get preloaded anywhere?
Well, I guess I will just have to stick with Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 95 if I want that sort of thing. :P (BTW, Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1.14 works great on these!)
Nah, they wouldn't have to go that far. I'm sure the nice folks at Opera(and Mozilla as well) would be happy to settle for having Opera and Firefox preinstalled along with IE on a default Windows install, and then letting the user decide which one they wanted. Then they wouldn't have to rip IE out and Opera couldn't claim an unfair advantage, since their browser was right there on the desktop besides IE. Shouldn't be hard to add Opera to the disc image either.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They tried that defense (intimately tied to the OS) at the original antitrust trials and an expert was able to remove IE back then in less than an hour.
The FACT that Microsoft has made IE more indespensable to windows, not less, pretty much is giving the Justice Department a big middle finger. No Linux distro I know of nor OS X fundamentally needs it's OS to do updates or anything like that. It's just BS on MS's part.
I hope they get shafted by the EU, since I feel shafted everytime MS forces me to use IE for one of their piddly little tasks.
Microsoft is pretty much a de facto monopoly.
If GM owned 95% of the auto market and somehow used their monopoly position to, say, put a proprietary, patented gas tank in their car that could only be filled at gas stations owned by GM, that would be a much more valid comparison.
How about a non-browser dependent package manager? Someone, please introduce Bill Gates to 2009!
Of course I still prefer buying a nice shiny CD from the Mozilla Store. (Buy one! Better yet, buy a dozen!)
Removing IE breaks a lot of functionality in XP, so I doubt they can simply have bundled and unbundled product lines
As other posts pointed out, it's not clear if that's even true. If it is, they can always remove the the browser application, while leaving the browser components in.
But there might be another option. Instead of removing IE, they could bundle other browsers, or an installer that will get other browsers, into the default windows install.
Why does everyone think you need a browser to download something. It's not like HTTP is a protocol made for downloading files.How about FTP, p2p, or an add/remove programs that actually adds programs.
It doesn't have to be hard. I cannot believe so many people on slashdot actually think you need a browser to download a file. A lot of times a browser uses FTP anyway to download something. Now I will agree that most people have become accustomed to having a browser pre-installed. I'll even agree that it can be useful. But it absolutely is not necessary for downloading.
OEM preinstalls.
A package manager? Okay. Sure.
Microsoft then makes a Microsoft Package Manager, and distributes it with Windows.
Next thing you know, some company goes, "zomg! Microsoft is so evil, they're not including MY package manager! I'm going to sue! Waaaaah!"
Then what? Seriously, when does it stop?
Love sees no species.
But Mac OS and Linux distros aren't de facto monopolies in the operating system market. If Mac OS came on 95% of computers and Safari was on the machines out of the box, I think the EU would pursue the issue too. It's about using one monopoly/near monopoly position to further another one.
If Microsoft held less than half of the market, I don't think MS would have been the target of the EU for this
Fine. So Canonical, Red Hat, Novell, and the Debian Project are bundling browsers. No-one is saying OEMs shouldn't be able to do the same. The point is that the Linux Foundation isn't the one bundling. Also, the distributions don't tightly integrate Firefox into the rest of the system (in fact, Debian uses Epiphany by default). Removing it is a simple apt-get or yum.
From a ruling in 2001, they are certainly a monopoly, and have abused that status.
Link.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I personally look forward to when TV's are no longer sold with remotes. Only when we stop the unfair bundling of remotes with TV's will consumers be forced to no longer accept "good enough" remotes when far better remotes are available for purchase.
Personally, I find the whole IE bundling witch hunt paternalistic. Let Opera, or whoever, advertise their products in the marketplace, and get people to buy them. Firefox did that full-page ad and that did far more to increase its market exposure and usage than all of the thousands upon thousands of dollars wasted on anti-trust litigation.
My point exactly - bundling isn't a necessity. And, because of lack of bundling, we have choices. apt-get install lynx (or yum install or rpm -hiv or emerge) is just as simple, removal is simple, and, wait, we can chose a default browser rather then being given one!
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
"Do you really want developers all installing versions of the browser core all over the OS with their applications?"
It would make more sense to me if they simply didn't require a web browser application.
If an application really did require a web browser, however, then it can ask for a browser application to be installed in a central location where the app and other apps can make use of any libraries. Doesn't seem silly to me.
In the old days there were plenty of application that would tell me "This program requires Internet Explorer to be installed". After MS started bundling it, developers seemed to get lazier and just assumed it was installed and/or that I would want to install it.
If you want the terms of use for Microsoft software, here they are: http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx.
"If Windows doesn't come with a web browser, how do you get one?"
This is asked and answered in several places, but there are a variety of easy ways this can or could be done.
* First, OEMs would pre-install their choice of web browser(s) for you.
* Get a CD-ROM with the software from your vendor (Firefox and IE are available on CD
* Windows could get with this century and add a friendly non-browser based package manager.
* A simple auto-downloader (double-click an icon and it grabs the file).
* Other, optional, file sharing applications - could be P2P or even just a friendly GUI FTP program.
* Start with IE installed, download another browser, then uninstall IE (if IE were truly optional you could do this).
Reminds me of when MS was making rumblings that Linux was illegally undercutting them by giving it away for free...
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
It is very dangerous when rulings like this come about. Who is to define when bundling of one product with another constitutes antitrust violation? When Apple "bundles" Safari with Mac OS X, is that antitrust? When you install Ubuntu and Firefox is "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? When you install a text editor and syntax highlighting files for a bunch of languages are "bundled" with it, is that antitrust? What about Solitaire? Can that be bundled? Why the emphasis on the browser? Because Opera feels it inconvenient that Windows already comes with a browser?
Let me tell you something. I found out about Opera when it was in version 3. Back then, you could use it for 30 days (if you didn't use it during a day, it didn't count against your 30 days), and if you liked it, you had to pay. Shareware. Their marketing message at the time was something along the lines that, we're so sure you'll like the speed of our browser, here are the links to download Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Try and compare. And they were absolutely right. Their browser was faster in every respect, leaner, smaller, tighter. When you clicked a file to download it, it immediately began to download, while you were selecting the destination. Contrast that with IE and Netscape of the time, which waited until you took half an hour to navigate to where you wanted the file before they even started. Page rendering was faster. The interface was uncluttered, simple, quick, easy to use. It was a wonderful product. I continued upgrading through versions 4, 5, 6, and 7. At some point in there, it stopped being shareware and became free software. And at some point, I stopped using it and moved on to Firefox. The reason was simple. The browser grew and began to include all kinds of bells and whistles. The interface became cluttered. Too much junk in my opinion. I am sure that some people like that, but for me, the very reason to use Opera was that it was the opposite of these other bloated browsers. It became IMHO what I was trying to get away from. Don't get me wrong. In the 5 or 6 or 7 years that I used Opera, it was a lifesaver. It was a joy to use, much, much, much better than the alternative (which at some point between the demise of Netscape and the first release of Firefox, was only IE or very crippled browsers). I just think they should have concentrated on having the tiniest yet fully featured browser, lightning fast, low memory usage, etc. So they could keep linking to the IE download page, because they could be so sure and correct that their browser kicks the pants off the competition. Unfortunately they chose the legal route, which is always a bad thing.
Back to Microsoft. If due to some court case, Microsoft is not allowed to bundle anything together, then soon nobody will be allowed to bundle anything together. This will be horrible! Besides, if you buy computer with Windows OS and there is no browser bundled with it, how in the hell are you supposed to download a different browser? 99.9% of computer users will NOT know how to download a browser without first having one with which to download one. In fact, even if you were going to compile wget from sources, you'd still need a browser to get the sources and the compiler. This is an example of courts, companies, lawyers, who have no clue about computers (and think the monitor is the computer) just trying to play the lawsuit lottery against Microsoft. Face it. They no longer have a monopoly. Apple is nearly at 10% of the market. Linux has some share. The *BSDs have some share. People DO have a choice now. If they don't buy an Apple (which is dead simple to use and doesn't cost more than a comparable "PC" machine), and if they don't want to learn Linux (or won't or can't) then it is their choice to use Windows. And there is no monopoly in the browser area either. With IE, Konquerer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, shit the list goes on and on. What monopoly? This is not antitrust. This is bullshit. Sorry. I LOVE Opera. Opera 3 especially. It has come a long way since then, many improvements, but the fact is that when all was darkness around and Opera shone some light on the Internet by making it actually bearable to use rather than the horror that was IE or Netscape, but I am no fan of this lawsuit.
Yes a list of software licences not easily found on their site will really help when someone is deciding what to buy at the shop or when installing an OS and leaving them with no internet service at the time.
Sure they could research this beforehand but what I've learned from the Ubuntu laptop topic is that the average person is a moron and fans of MS think this is acceptable. Which means they'll never find that URL so it effectively doesn't exist. Which makes MS happy because they, like most software companies, don't want people to realise software licences are shit.
That's not true AT all. IE became dominant because IE 4.x was much, much better than NN was as IE had a fully programmable object model and NN was stuck with a partially programmable one. Remember document.write?
I wish I could forget but that's all grandma will talk about if you mention computers.
Shouldn't be hard to add Opera to the disc image either.
Yeah, until all the other browsers in existence start complaining. I want Konqueror on that image as well!
For what it's worth, I think it's a pretty sad reflection on the Slashdot community that a post citing numerous specific cases where Windows might be considered superior to Linux has got hit with enough troll mods to make it disappear for most people, yet there are no replies actually countering the points made in that post. I guess abusing the mod system is easier than making a real argument.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
and they come with browsers too...
Which can be uninstalled.
And, if you think that your super TCP/IP stack is better than the native kernel version, you are free to make your own distro that includes it. If you have a GUI that is way better than X, you are free to make an OS that includes the basic Linux kernel and whatever software you can find that uses your GUI. You can even pay a licence and put commercial software on your distribution and sell it for whatever you want. Cool eh?.
Such a think would not happen, because a minor player can make their own distribution and float it on the marketplace. If a major player is found to be supressing competition unfairly then of course they need to be taken down. If they are just better than you then sucks to be you.
And I have mod points...
People are drastically missing the point here. Nobody's punishing Microsoft because they're Microsoft, and nobody's saying you can't bundle a browser with an OS.
The facts are these:
1. You can't leverage a monopoly in another market.
2. Web browsers and operating systems are separate markets.
3. Microsoft has the monopoly on Operating Systems.
4. Microsoft leverages their Windows monopoly to further their browser market share.
So nobody is saying Microsoft can't bundle a browser - they just have to provide options. Make it so you can choose your browser on install, make it so the OEM can choose a browser to bundle with default installs, whatever. Some sort of choice. You can bundle fifty browsers if you want. Just don't bundle your own and only your own.
As of now the problem isn't that Microsoft is bundling a browser, it's that they're bundling only their browser and offering no options to anybody.
Q: How do you know a liberal has lost an argument? A: They start calling you names
Which would make Rush Limbaugh a liberal. It would in fact make the Bush administration liberal throwing the name terrorist around way too freely.
That would make you a liberal as well as a lot of so called conservatives since anyone that doesn't fully agree with their opinions is a socialist, liberal or pinko.
Q: How do you make a liberal sad? A: Remind them of their carbon footprint
Q: How do you make a liberal angry? A: Tell them a Capitalist is making money off their carbon footprint
The biggest problem with this as a whole is it's just baseless name calling from a racist simpleton.
It ignores the fact I'm a conservative but a real one which believes in actual conservatism and not pandering to the South and their huge population of low-IQ, high religion gullible dimwits, like yourself.
Capitalism isn't about breaking laws and shitting all over everyone. Maybe when you understand capitalism then you can start your own business, make a decent living and stop resorting to being a grumpy little racist tit.
As a web developer, I really and truly hate Microsoft from the bottom of my heart for the steaming pile of incompatibility that is IE.
However, I cannot conceive selling a consumer/business OS without a web browser these days. From the end user perspective, browsing the web is simply a piece of basic functionality. What's more, it would make windows the only consumer grade OS that does not have a browser after installing a graphical environment. OS X has safari. The major desktop environments for *nix have a browser by default (galleon or konqueror) or the distro has added one (firefox in xubuntu, for example). Even damn small has dillo.
Technically, it does not make much sense to yank the browser out. If I understand correctly, Trident draws much of the windows desktop anyway, so it is a small step to wrap a window around it and call it a browser.
No, today the browser is just part of the OS. The Commission's directorate general of anti-competition (DG Comp, for those who hang out at Schuman) missed the boat on this one. They should have been fighting this fight a decade ago. Today is too late.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
From a consumer perspective, that a Linux distribution comes with Firefox is not really any different than a Windows distribution coming with IE. In both cases, I can go and get and use the browser that I want to use.
There are two key differences. First, monopolies have to play by stricter rules than everyone else. Second, almost every Linux distribution comes with more than one browser, and an OEM is generally allowed to remove those and replace them with their favourite (or just ship without a browser). OEM's can't ship Windows without IE.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The question I have for Obama is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single fat colored mammy sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check?
Far from helping the economy, Microsoft has harmed it. It has reduced competition in the computer industry, which means fewer jobs and higher prices. It has a long history of pushing for H1B visa increases intended to reduce the average wage of skilled tech workers. Why when there are so many people out of work are they STILL pushing H1B visas?
Also, Microsoft is an abnormally profitable company. That comes from somewhere. For every dollar that Microsoft makes in profit, that could have been $0.25 ~~ $0.30 to a normally profitable company. Which means, because of Microsoft's monopoly, we have one business employing fewer people instead of 3 or 4 business of roughly the same size employing 3 or 4 times that number of people.
Microsoft should be broken up by the government as an anti-competitive monopoly.
If you're an OEM, you can just remove whatever the distribution picked for their browser and replace it with Opera. Microsoft doesn't let you remove IE.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Removing IE breaks a lot of functionality in XP,
You're joking, right? Try XPlite, for example:
http://www.litepc.com/
Works as advertised.
Any number of shells exist for replacing windows explorer, too. Most actually have *more* functionality.
Anyway, they don't need to remove it - just deliver XP - or, probably be more relevant to be talking about Vista - with alternative browers installed as well. Opera, Firefox, Chrome.
(provided that is there decision...there's still time for Microsoft to bribe them like they did at ISO for OOXML).
The ECJ is not some dinky little standards body. The ECJ is a immensely powerful court composed of some of the most powerful people in Europe. Its decisions legally bind entire industries and countries. It is more like the SCOTUS than ISO
I am not saying that the members of the ECJ are incorruptible, just that Microsoft, as rich as they are, have nowhere near the means to corrupt them.
Of course, this is not in the court system yet. Right now it is being handled by the European Commission's Directorate General of Competition, which is kind of like the US Attorney's office in the US. This institution exists purely to find and punish anti-competitive behavior. Its members live under a microscope and its deliberations are a matter of public record. They regularly go after massive European corporations openly supported by member State governments.
Some foreign IT company is not going to have the means to corrupt this body, either.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
The fact that this article got marked as flamebait is demonstrative of how disconnected from reality a lot of people on this site are. What happens when Firefox gets to 50% or more of the browser market? Are Opera going to sue them as well for predative price fixing with Microsoft and Apple?
You're making a fool of yourself - if Firefox got 50% of the browser market it would be on its merits - not because it was preinstalled on the 'Firefox/Mozilla Operating System'. The whole point - which you are presumably deliberately missing - is that MS uses its operating system dominance to create browser dominance, which is potentially illegal under competition law.
Once again:
Having a monopoly is *not* illegal;using it to create a monopoly in another area is.
If you think that by reducing H1B visas that employee wages will increase then you're gravely mistaken.
What is going to happen is that more and more jobs will be outsource to other countries. No problem for me seeming as I work in one of those other countries so will be happy to take the work.
If you need an expert in a certain field and all you have is joe blow half decent php programmer then you need to import people.
The more smart people that the US can convince to come over the better it will be so I don't understand why you'd have a problem with this unless you're complaining because all those smart people are making competition for you.
A major part of Opera's complaint was explicitly the "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" strategy in conjunction with bundling. It seems this argument is now often forgotten in news and discussions.
The problem is more complex than "Oh, don't be anal, what's so terrible about bundling, you gotta have bundling." Can't you remember our discussions? How a monopolist breaking standards hurts us all?
If the EU wants to be consistent, they would have to require Apple to remove iTunes, Safari and iLife from every Mac delivered in Europe. That means you either have to download it or buy the software as a separate cost item.
In the end, I think what EU really wants is to strip down Windows 7 so it has the same functionality as the first release of Windows 95--you have to install the web browser, media player and possibly the fast disk search functionality separately.
When you first start up Windows 7, it has a little task list for you, like "Get Anti-Virus" and whatnot, in the bottom right corner. They could very easily make a little app that downloads a browser for you, and remind you to "download a browser - click here."
You've actually nailed everything that's wrong with antitrust law!
Your suggestion is basically this: MS is really successful. Like, really really successful. If we were to just give a little bit of that success to other companies, many other companies would be successful as well. To achieve this distribution of success, we should break up Microsoft. Basically, you're advocating punishing success!
That is, of course, the Bill Gates argument. "I'm successful, so let me be successful." Al Capone was successful as well. Standard Oil was successful too.
Microsoft is successful because of its illegal and unethical actions. Its "success" is at the expense of the consumer and the industry. That sort of "success" denies a functioning market place of greater success.
...how it is that the courts in America ruled that Microsoft was ok to keep bundling IE with Windows, while Microsoft's hopes in the EU when faced with the same issue is basically nil?
The thing is, the US courts didn't rule that it was ok for MS to bundle IE and Windows. They ruled it was criminal. Then, a new crop of politicians were elected and MS was one of the largest donors to their reelection funds. They replaced the people prosecuting MS and the punishment for MS's illegal bundling was no to be broken up so they couldn't do it again, but instead to not even be stopped from continuing the crime. Rather, the punishment was a very small fine and basically nothing else. This proved to companies around the world that the US court system is useless for getting judgements against rich corporations if you're not quite as rich. As a result American companies started complaining to the EU about other American companies rathe than bothering with the US courts. The EU, you see, was actually handing down the occasional useful verdict.
Since the US courts and several other courts have already convicted MS of this particular crime and most of the important facts have already been proven in the last case, MS has little or no chance of getting off scott free. The real question is if they will just end up fining them a pile of cash or if they will enforce a punishment that will do good in the long term, like forcing them to de-bundle or adhere to standards as decided by an independent watch group.
This is why I pirate. It's a form of protest against software, music, or video makers who happily take my money but refuse to provide any kind of guarantee for return. Even food manufacturers provide a "satisfaction guaranteed or money back" warranty. There's no reason why software, music, and video companies can't do the same.
Oh, and posting the terms on an internet site is worthless for customers who don't have internet. The terms should be revealed at point-of-sale, not hidden inside the box. It's just a way to entrap the customer and raid wallets.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I have an idea. Let's go and sue Linux distributions for bundling free and open source browsers with it, because it wrecks the market for my $40 closed source browser!
Sure, go ahead. Daniel Wallace tried that a couple of years ago, with a very similar argument. He claimed that he wanted to sell his own operating system, and that the GPL amounted to price fixing at zero, and thus Linux was hindering him from selling his own OS.
In short, the court didn't like that argument. He tried to amend his complain several times, but those amended complaints didn't fly either. But if you feel like paying for nothing, go ahead and sue.
The absurdity of this is overwhelming. Nobody ever thinks about why Opera is doing this - it isn't because they love "the people" and want to ensure they get a good browser. It's because they really want some more of that money (yes, yes, Opera is free - I understand their revenue model). What a great way to abuse a bloated bureaucracy - if you can't defeat your competitors in the open market, then get government to handicap them for you.
But seriously, how the does EU "law" even work? I'm not even going to insult Hammurabi by calling them "laws." I'm going to henceforth refer to EU ruling as "Lord Fauntleroy's Whims".
So lemme get this straight: They ruled in 2002 that MS had to decouple IE from Windows, and allow users not to have it as the default browser, yadda yadda yadda, all so other browser makers could "compete." And I'm really sure that your average user, when confronted with an OS with *no* browser is really going to go comparison-shopping. No, I'm pretty sure it goes like this: "WTF!? Der Komputer hat keine browser!?! Ich moechte god damned IE!" *downloads IE.*
Anyway, so now, the commission has *further* decided that Microsoft can't even include IE at all, because Opera bitched about it? Seriously, when does it end? When Opera's happy? What's next?
"EU rules that Microsoft Windows 7 runs too fast, looks too pretty. Due to a complaint from Sun who said that Microsoft is abusing their ability to produce good software that runs well, the EU has ruled that Microsoft must write an "Uglification and Slowification" patch within 15 minutes or else be fined 1 Hojillion Euro per second until they do." Ugh.
Look in this case it is more like they have their criminal and have a reason, a formal reason to imprison him. It is like Al Capone and the tax authorities.
Microsoft went ballistic against EU institutions and opted for a burned soil scenario. If you negotiate that hard and fool administration it will fight back and they will stab you in the back without mercy. This is exactly what is happening now.
The Opera complaint was cheap but fun. So they make some fuzz. Note that the Commission is in the lame duck period so they actually do what they always wanted to do and slap ruthless lobbyists in the face. In the end playing evil could pay off, this time for the Commission.
Suum cuique.
Look what Commissioner Reding is doing now with the Telcos, fixed price for roaming. The Telco lobbyists slaughtered her Telcom directive package and the content mafia also took advantage of it. Now the leaving Commissioner places some bomb traps for them.
Because administration needs to educate companies that just don't behave. Microsoft, Exxon and Tobacco lobbying is about to crater. They crossed the line.
It's the IT version of the moronic "those illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs!" idiocy. Possibly racism, too. I love the H1B visa program; our QA team consists of a Chinese woman, a Indian woman, a Armenian man, and an British man, all top-of-their field. The H1B program is the kind of "mixing pot" laws that made America great, and will continue to do so.
Comment of the year
The absurdity of this is overwhelming.
What's absurd is the average Slashdotter's understanding of economics and antitrust law.
Nobody ever thinks about why Opera is doing this - it isn't because they love "the people" and want to ensure they get a good browser.
This is both a strawman and irrelevant. It's like arguing that when Opera calls the cops after someone robs their office no one thinks if they're doing it out of love of the people. Of course they aren't, but that doesn't mean people think they are and it doesn't mean we shouldn't enforce either antitrust laws or theft laws because of it. Sometimes when people act in their own best interests (like reporting a theft of their property) the laws can work in the best interests of that company and society.
It's because they really want some more of that money.
Gee really? Corporations want money? Thanks for the inside info genius.
...if you can't defeat your competitors in the open market, then get government to handicap them for you.
Yeah, I also get the government to handicap the mafia for me by forcing them to obey the criminal law codes that apply to everyone.
But seriously, how the does EU "law" even work?
So let me be sure understand you. You don't know how the law works, but you though instead of learning you'd come to Slashdot and post about how stupid the laws you don't understand are? That's just brilliant.
I'm not even going to insult Hammurabi by calling them "laws." I'm going to henceforth refer to EU ruling as "Lord Fauntleroy's Whims".
Yeah those whimsical europeans copying american antitrust laws almost exactly. What nonsensical hilarity.
So lemme get this straight: They ruled in 2002 that MS had to decouple IE from Windows, and allow users not to have it as the default browser, yadda yadda yadda, all so other browser makers could "compete."
Umm correct assuming the "they" in your sentence is the US court system.
And I'm really sure that your average user, when confronted with an OS with *no* browser is really going to go comparison-shopping.
You think users would be involved, how cute. Guess what users generally never install Windows and the same magical fairies that install Windows on computers (OEMs) are probably going to put a browser on as well.
Anyway, so now, the commission has *further* decided that Microsoft can't even include IE at all, because Opera bitched about it?
No, the commission has decided that MS bundling Windows and IE seems to be illegal. This isn't terribly surprising since the US already convicted them of the same crime and so did several other countries. The EU has just convicted MS of other crimes regarding other antitrust abuses. The EU just notified Microsoft that they're going forward with the complaint and gave them a couple of months to respond before they go ahead with the prosecution.
Seriously, when does it end? When Opera's happy? What's next?
When MS stops breaking the law and changes their business model to a legal one. So far MS has been intentionally breaking the law and paying the fines and settlements under the assumption that the courts are weak and ineffective. The US proved them right since after MS very large campaign contributions all their legal problems magically went away there. It has come to the point where american companies like Sun take MS to court in the EU because they have no confidence in the US court system. Hopefully the EU will effectively punish MS to the point that they stop their illegal actions and level the playing field.
I don't know if you've noticed but Web technologies pretty much suck these days. Web pages still use half completed versions of decade old specific