EC Considering Removing Internet Explorer From Windows

Itsabouttime writes "In a preliminary ruling, the European Commission told Microsoft that linking Internet Explorer to its dominant Windows operating system violates EC rules. The EC's ruling was triggered by a complaint from IE rival Opera. Microsoft could seek to offer a Windows version without IE, as it did in the EC's 2004 ruling on Windows Media Player."

Comments

Slow Justice is No Justice

[alain94040]

Let's look at the facts:

the EC said tying Internet Explorer with Windows provides Internet Explorer with an artificial distribution advantage

That's stating the obvious.

Now check out the timeline on this procedure. Microsoft was accused of tying Windows Media Player to Windows in 2004. That's what the current case is based on.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson:

Under EU procedure, the European Commission will not make a final determination until after it receives and assesses Microsoftâ(TM)s response

In other words, expect this to last another few years before anything happens. By then, Internet Explorer will have been renamed Windows 8 and Microsoft will argue that the lawsuit is moot. Do consumers win? Lawyers do, that's for sure. Slow justice is no justice.

Expect Microsoft to offer to ship a version of Windows without any web browser. So you won't be able to download firefox either!

--
FairSoftware.net -- where geeks are their own boss

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[MozeeToby]

I guess I'm confused about what Opera expects to get out of this. I know I, for one, would be pretty pissed off to open up my new computer and not have any way to go download Firefox. What exactly are they hoping to gain? Are they really arguing that new computers should ship with no internet browser what so ever?

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[nmb3000]

Most likely it will just ship with a second or third browser installed.

And how will Microsoft select the alternatives? If they were forced to include other browsers, every dinky browser author and company would be pining to get their browser included in the alternatives list, threatening lawsuits if Microsoft doesn't comply. It would also mean that, since the software is supplied by Microsoft as part of Windows, Microsoft has to keep it updated and has to accept a certain level of liability.

The real solution to this is for Microsoft to allow OEMs like Dell, HP, etc to include other browsers on new machines. This would give users the same choices they have with regards to other bundled software and it also leaves the market open, for example, to allow Mozilla or Opera to pay to have their software installed on all Dell machines. This would also prevent Microsoft from needing to keep the first-party bundled browser up-to-date with service packs and updates.

The only downside is that people who buy retail/OEM versions of Windows will still need to use IE to download their choice browser, but I still fail to see how that impacts anything. If the complete failure of Windows N has taught us anything it should be that customers really don't want a crippled out-of-the-box operating system.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[gravos]

It's an ideological thing, nothing more. For us nerdy types, who cares what browser is bundled with the OS as long as the user has full choice to download and use whatever browser we want. The problem is that people are lazy and will use whatever is bundled because it is already there. IE gains marketshare just because nobody cares enough to switch.

But you're right. Practically speaking, who cares.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I guess I'm confused about what Opera expects to get out of this.

That's very understandable given the assumptions made by both the summary and the post you're responding to.

I know I, for one, would be pretty pissed off to open up my new computer and not have any way to go download Firefox.

That's not going to happen. No remedy is going to stop Dell or HP from bundling what they want, just Microsoft. From the end user perspective it means you might get a different browser pre-installed and if you build your own computer from components you may have to burn a CD with a browser on it.

What exactly are they hoping to gain?

Opera's complaint specifically addressed the fact that MS's abuse has resulted in a huge portion of the Web no longer being standards compliant and that this was part of MS's intention as revealed by their internal memos. I suspect Opera hopes for several things possibly including, Windows shipping with multiple browsers and MS being forced to make IE standards compliant and supporting a reasonable level of new standards on par with all the other browsers. Both moves would significantly benefit Opera both in market share and because they would not have to try to write a noncompliant mode for their browser to deal with all the pages designed to work with IE instead of standards and there would no longer be such a barrier to companies looking to switch browsers. Note, Opera said nothing about forcing MS to ship a version without IE, that was just other people's assumption based upon the EU's failed attempt at remedying the media player market.

Are they really arguing that new computers should ship with no internet browser what so ever?

No. That's just something people who don't know what they're talking about and who such a ruling would affect keep mentioning. Ignore them. It makes no sense to anyone who even slightly understands antitrust law and this case.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[linebackn]

It's more than that. IE can not be uninstalled.

Even if OEMs choose to include any other browser(s), they currently must alway have IE regardless if they want it or not.

And there is a strong tenancy to not have multiple applications that do the same thing. So which browser winds up getting installed? Right, IE. Because there is no choice.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[Joe U]

That is because IE is not just the browser frontend, it is an entire framework that a lot of third party applications depend on.

This was done intentionally by Microsoft, even going so far as making important components like Explorer depend on it. This isn't really the case any more for most of Windows, but the third party programs still need it, so removing it would break a lot of programs people use.

Back in 1995, this was very important to getting the Internet to the users and people seem to forget that. You didn't have many choices back then, especially if you wanted to write an app that used HTML in any meaningful way. It was pretty original to use HTML inside applications as a simple object, and it made coding these applications very easy.

Nowadays everyone and their brother has a HTML renderer, so it's moot, but it would break all the legacy apps that use the IE components.

What Opera and other companies really want is IE off the start menu and the components left in the OS.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Firefox or Apple with Safari didnt need a lawsuit. They are doing fine. They are standard compliant. And IE keeps loosing[sic] market shares.

First, there is no lawsuit, just a compliant about a violation of criminal law. It is more akin to reporting a robbery to the cops than suing someone over a dispute. Second is the question of if IE losing market share as rapidly as it should in a free market or if it is being propped up. Is IE significantly better than Opera, enough to justify it's 70% market share even with its technological inferiority? If it wasn't bundled with Windows would it have that large of share? If MS had not intentionally broken standards to create IE only Web pages would it have that much market share?

I'd also like to address your assertion that Firefox and Safari are standards compliant. They mostly are, but they also spent millions creating work arounds so they can handle non-standards compliant pages such as MS schemed to create as a way to harm competitors. These aren't even facts in doubt as they were established when the US investigated then convicted them of this same crime... the crime they never stopped committing.

It looks like Opera is convinced that their product is the best, and its only Microsoft fault if they are not on everybody's desktop.

No, it looks like Opera wants a fair fight. After all, if IE is a better browser users will pick it over Opera, right? Demanding other companies obey the law is not asking for favoritism.

And maybe they are just not that good, maybe their product is not much better compared to the other ones, or maybe their Marketing failed.. who knows?

Nobody, because the free market was not allowed to judge because MS broke the law. All they're asking for is the chance to fight on even ground so users or OEMs can pick what they think is best instead of having a default and a Web full of pages that only work in one browser.

Maybe they didnt realize that a browser product by itself has little value for the end user (not enough value to pay for it in any case). And that its all about the devices and the content.

Current browsers don't have a lot to offer, but that's because current Web pages are still using decade old technologies to display pages because one particular browser with most of the market has refused to implement any new technologies that might allow users to have a Web capable of making Windows less essential. If IE were to disappear tomorrow replaced by any other browser or combination, the Web would suddenly leap forward technologically and you could run Web apps, view video and audio using standards, develop Web pages in half the time, and use vector graphics to deliver better quality graphics using less bandwidth. MS's criminal actions are more than inconveniencing Opera, they are crippling the Web to keep user locked into Windows.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I think the major point is that the same rules should not apply to Microsoft because they have a monopoly position in the OS market (or at least a lot of people see them that way).

I agree with most of your post, but your wording here is a bit misleading. Everyone has to follow the same laws. It is illegal for anyone to tie a monopolized product to a product in another pre-exiting market. That applies to MS and Apple and Sony and every other company and these laws have been enforced against many companies and all these companies have lawyers who told them this long ago. Microsoft can't bundle Windows and IE and when they did it they knew they were breaking the law. Apple may or may not be able to tie iPods to the iTunes Music Store, dependent only on whether the iPod has enough influence to constitute a monopoly and the EU has been investigating that very possibility.

With a company with offerings in as many categories as Microsoft has, it's very easy for them to tie strong, popular products to weak or new ones. To an extent this is their prerogative, as any manufacturer can make their products work best in their own environment.

Note, this behavior becomes illegal as soon as the "strong" product moves into the realm of having monopoly influence (usually around 70% market share). For MS, there is no question that Windows is a monopoly since the EU courts have already made that determination in previous cases.

I agree that it would be absurd to have an OS without a web browser at this point, but calling for equal treatment of different OS players would require that the playing field was level, which is not the case.

There is no technical reason why Windows can't ship without a browser or engine and leave it to OEMs to pick the browser and plug-in engine they desire. This is quite different from end users getting a computer without a browser pre-installed, which no one (outside of the clueless) has suggested.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[bigman2003]

You're on crack...

The fact that the IE market share is declining is enough to demonstrate to reasonable people that the public IS aware that there are alternatives to using IE, and they ARE able to use these alternatives.

I've read your posts in this thread, and your whining is incredible annoying. You compare Microsoft's web browser to a murderer killing people.

You also repeat over and over that Microsoft is keeping us 8 years behind in website technology. That's a load of crap. Who added the non-standard features to their browser that makes AJAX possible?

It was the ubiquity of a browser included in Windows that opened up the web to most of the world. People now realize that there are other browsers available, and they are branching out, no problem.

If Internet Explorer blocked people from downloading other browsers, I would see the point. But otherwise it's just a bunch of complaining from a few also-rans.

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[Anonymous Cowpat]

I see, and when IE is taken out of the windows install and the new user is provided with discs containing Opera, Firefox, Chrome and IE, which will they choose to install? The ones who don't care (i.e. the ones who are scared of the computer and just want to get back to myspace) will pick the one carrying the same logo as was on the splash screen when they started the computer.

I have an ideology too, and mine is that I want my computer to do as much out of the box as possible, with the minimum of fuss. If the operating system manufacturer has included extra apps to do things that I want to do, great. If those apps are surpassed enough by something third party that it's worth the minimal effort taken to switch, I'll switch,
I suspect that most people who are willing to use 3rd party apps feel the same - 3rd party apps which suck don't have the right to try and poach users from the OS manufacturer's apps by stopping users having that default and hoping to bamboozle them into installing the suckier 3rd party app. If your app is good people will use it anyway.

And now for the car analogy:
Imagine a world where electric windows aren't standard. Now, imagine that someone starts selling aftermarket electric windows. Now imagine that a car manufacturer, seeing the popularity of electric windows, starts to offer electric windows as standard equipment (and modifies its manufacturing process such that they can't really build cars without electric windows). The manufacturer's electric windows can still be replaced with new ones; if the aftermarket window people can offer a sufficient improvement to be worth getting it done they'll still do business, if they can't; they won't. Now, why should the situation be different if only one company makes cars?
So their size and ability to provide electric windows for 'free' makes it difficult to compete? Sucks to be you - make a better product or make a different add on in the full expectation that it'll become standard equipment in a few years, but don't bitch that you want the people who buy the cars to be forced to take the car home from the dealer and then either pay you to fit your electric windows, leaving their car out of action for a week, or return it to the dealer to fit electric windows for free, but still leaving them car-less for a week.

While I can see that developers need to eat, I can also see that the alternative is that everyone suffers for having useful features taken away from them. Or, like they did with Windows XP N, the only people who'll care enough to buy the crippled version are the people who would have cared enough to install alternate software whether the built-in was there or not.

Do we see KDE complaining that Explorer competes with KDE4 for windows? OpenOffice complaining that wordpad competes with them? Octave complaining that for simple work calc competes with them? Zonealarm complaining that windows now includes a firewall? No.
How much more of the ability of a fresh windows install to just let the user get on with what they want to be doing is going to be chipped away at because someone else wants an opening to peddle something to users to enable them to do what they could before?

Finally, I hear no-one screaming that linux should adhere to the same standards. Linux will not 'win' whilst it's seen as trying to create an unfair playing field with legal actions. If someone suggested that Firefox, Lynx, Konqueror and Nautilus were abolished from default installs so that other browsers could get a shot, it would be laughed off the mailing list. Someone sugesting that both browsers and all methods of getting browsers should go, forcing users to get them from a seperate disc would probably find themselves off the mailing list sharpish.

The computer is a wonderful tool because it can do so many things, trying to make it so that it won't do those things without first fiddling with it is a step backwards - especially as there are lots of other things that people may want to do which rely on internet explorer being t

Re:Slow Justice is No Justice

[jopsen]

Who said anything about making them care... But if windows didn't ship with IE, IE wouldn't be as tightly bundled with the os... and OEMs might ship with opera, firefox or whatever they think might give the best user experience. BTW, Many countries in the EU are semi socialistic, e.g. liberalsocialistic... And why is that relevant?

Stupid..

[bradgoodman]

This is so stupid.

Last time they did this over the "media player", after months of laywers and stuff, Microsoft finally agreed to come out with a version of the OS which lacked the Media player.

And the verdict?

Nobody wanted it.

If you don't want IE, do what I do. Just don't run it.

Re:Stupid..

[florin]

Noone wanted it because the version without Media Player cost exactly the same as the one with. So which OEM in his right mind would put that on a PC? Which shop would stock it?

The EU made a mistake in not forcing MS to lower the pricing on the Windows without Media Player.

How much cheaper could Windows really be if your purchase price wasn't sponsoring the programming teams that are working on the 'free' browser, virus scanner, defragmenter, backup program, touch interface, fax and scan interface, optical burn program, media player, movie maker, speech recognition, java clone, flash knockoff and all the other crap that you get with Vista? None of these programs are particularly good, so let's just see some Win32/MFC/.NET libraries for say 10$ and you can keep the rest of the crap. There are better alternatives which are truly free.

Re:Stupid..

[Caetel]

That's because Windows Media Player is free.

"This download is available to customers running genuine Microsoft Windows"

So no, it's not free. You just don't pay for it because it's incorporated into the cost of the Windows licence.

Can IE be removed?

[Onyma]

I would be very interested to see how Microsoft would go about even trying to remove IE. At best I would think they could extract the GUI wrapper for the engine that most people call "IE"... but the core rendering engine is required for many other components such as the help system for example. Being forced to remove the rendering engine from Windows would be like taking out the bottom brick in Jenga.

Re:What about the Firefox I get with Ubuntu?

[RaceProUK]

Since Ubuntu don't make Firefox, I doubt it.

Re:What about the Firefox I get with Ubuntu?

[vux984]

Since Ubuntu don't make Firefox, I doubt it.

I think it would be more accurate as "Since Ubuntu isn't a convicted monopolist, I doubt it."

Monopolies operate under different rules. Comparing monopolies to non-monopolies is just stupid, whether its the Apple-Safari or Ubuntu-Firefox bundles, it doesn't matter. Those aren't monopolies so the rules are completely different.

Re:So what?

[JWman]

I'm not MS lover, but really, at what point does this stop? What if a company with a desire to litigate decides they want to enter the utilities market, but are hampered by the preloaded utilities available in Windows (defrag, search, etc.). Does MS have to strip out features every times someone calls foul? How far will it go? What if some company decides to make a CPU scheduler, and think that it's unfair that MS includes one with windows? Where's the line?
How many people are there buying computers who would think of thier computer as complete without an internet browser? Is MS evil for catering to this need?

On a related note, will Apple have to stop including Safari with OS X?

State sponsored monopoly

[owlstead]

I'll take these kind of actions seriously when:
- I don't need the Media Player for listening to state sponsored radio programs or television shows.
- Local governments don't rely on the .doc format anymore (although with OO this is less of a problem)
- All government sites run fine in standard compliant browsers
- Applications (like tax applications) are available for a freely available operating system at the same time as Windows
- Schools are pushed to learn people IT skills, not Microsoft skills
- Government and semi-government rely less on Microsoft only products and stops buying billions worth of licensing from Microsoft

Currently it feels like they are slapping Microsoft with one hand while feeding it with another. OK, since the slapping probably also means that Microsoft has to give some money back, it makes a slight bit of sense. But currently it is not a nice situation at all.

At least my bank and the public transport sector are platform independent, so we're getting to our money and somewhere.

Enough crap...

[AmigaMMC]

I'm European but I say enough with this crap. I have used FireFox as my primary browser ever since the very first stable version came out and like me many others. I'm sure most of you use FF or Opera. An OS needs to have a browser... imagine buy a new PC with Windows and not having a browser? How are you going to download FF or any other browser? Go out and buy a disk? Impractical. Have one already? Maybe, but not necessarily so. Frankly it doesn't bother me that Microsoft provides a browser with its O.S. This is not 1998, this is 2009 and in 2009 most everyone needs a browser right away. Those who don't like IE can use a different browser and many do. Why is the E.U. not attacking Apple? I don't think MacOS comes with IE or FF or Opera. It would maybe be smarter on the E.U. to say: "Ok, you need to provide at least another browser with your OS" but then we would see a war among those companies who want their browser to be represented, and why should the E.U. decide what goes into MY O.S. ?

Rediculous

[LunarEffect]

In my opinion there is a high degree of rediculousness behind this whole story.
Where is the border between something being a part of an OS and things that aren't? Next thing will be for them to want Microsoft to remove the Text editor, the file manager, the GUI and the Image Viewer from Windows, leaving you with a command prompt when you install it.
I mean, as much as I dislike using Windows, putting myself in the position of a "I don't know anything about computers and don't really care to learn, I just want them to work." type person, I'd feel really pissed off about not having a browser installed on my system when I buy it. I, as a Linux user, like to choose what is on my system though. =)
Anyway, I think what the EC should do instead of making Microsoft remove IE from its OS is to start a campaign to advertise alternative browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome...etc). Has there been a similar suit against Macintosh?