Slashdot Mirror
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."
Most likely it will just ship with a second or third browser installed. Then when you go to do anything involving a web browser for the first time, it will ask you which you would like to make your default.
As far as I know, that's how the modified version of XP works for Europe, though I have yet to hear of anyone actually using it.
a) it had the same price
That's because Windows Media Player is free.
b) they not only removed the Windows Media Player, but also Windows Media Codecs
Good grief. They get forced to remove WMP and then people get mad when then they go and remove WMP. When you uninstall Quicktime are you shocked to learn the MP4 and other Apple codecs are also removed? Besides, they're free too.
The whole point was to give consumers "choice" by making them install WMP themselves. Don't ask for something and then cry when you get it.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
If Ubuntu shipped on the vast majority of personal computers, then yes it might.
What's the legal difference?
I really, really hope Windows never, ever loads what it wants onto its operating system. If you thought users loading viruses and trojans was common but stupid (and easily blocked), can you imagine what would happen if the OS kernel decides that it damn well wants some malware and that you've no business telling it not ro?
Oh, you meant Microsoft! Actually, legally, no they can't. They may not use a monopoly in one environment to impose a de-facto monopoly in another market. That is a crime, and rightfully so. Monopolies that try to seize other markets are damn dangerous because you rapidly lack these supposed alternatives. Netscape discovered that one, when Microsoft "knifed the baby" (in Microsoft's own words). Alternative browsers ONLY exist today in meaningful numbers because IE6 was a mess and IE7 took too long to come to market, due to Microsoft having no browser team, having dismembered it. (If you see any suspicious-looking concrete structures with arms sticking out near the Redmond campus, that's probably them.) If Microsoft had kept with IE, then IE would be all that existed. Microsoft would long-since have fixed IIS to never serve a competing browser, and IE would have long-since been fixed to be so non-compliant with standards that IE-capable pages won't work anywhere else. (Actually, that last one is almost the case today.)
No, Microsoft has no business distorting the markets like that, creating monocultures of their choice, exterminating competitors (I suspect at least one MS exec is actually a dalek) and forcing people to only buy what it sells. You're seeing this with the anti-virus market today. MS got information under the false pretenses of working with anti-virus vendors on how the products worked and the data used, then used that information to create a version that it provided ready-installed. Nobody is going to buy software for a few hundred dollars that is not that different from the software that is provided already, which means those vendors are being squeezed out of existance. I expect that, by the time Windows 7 is fully released, very few if any of the current AV suppliers will still exist. Microsoft will have crushed the bones of their business and squeezed the life-blood out of the remains until nothing identifiable without a scanning electron microscope remained.
Now, I would agree with those who say Microsoft is not technically evil, just very very good at what it does. In the same way Nyarlothotep is. Indeed, they're probably related. Bill Gates probably has an actual copy of the Necronomican and his palace, err, home, is suspiciously close to where you might expect Cthulhu to hang out. Not evil, just very very powerful and very very insane.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem is not the browser per se, but the fact that it is on virtually every computer out there. For many people IE _is_ the internet. If you removed IE from their computer and installed Firefox, Opera or any other browser they would be lost, and wouldn't know they could still access internet. Since people don't have to choose to get IE, Microsoft has an unfair advantage over the competitors. It would probably be enough if you needed to install it from CD once you've unpacked your computer: it would require people to _do_ something to get IE, and that would expose them to the possibility of choice.
And this applies only to a monopoly: Apple's share of the home or office computer market is small enough that they can get away with bundling a browser. And with any version of Linux you can remove the browser and the OS still works fine (although using KDE without Konqueror could be just a bit frustrating...).
As for the browser being a necessary part of the OS, I don't agree. The way I see things the browser is just another application, just like a game, word processor, database handler or what have you. Granted, the browser will be using the OS to communicate with the outside world, but it isn't (or at least shouldn't be) an integral part of the OS.
they want their antitrust claim back.
Seriously, Firefox is up to more than 20% marketshare. IE doesn't have a monopoly.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
These lawsuits are ridiculous. Windows also ships with a firewall, disk defragmenting tool, notepad, calculator, freecell, solitaire, and a file browser. I guess those are all illegally bundled.
Name one major operating system that does not ship with a browser. Ubuntu and the Mac OS both ship with browsers. You can select other browsers, as you can with Microsoft Windows. This lawsuit is ridiculous.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I'll tell you what I'd do if I were them. I'd release "Windows Desktop Core". It would be like Windows Server Core - comes up to a desktop with a single command prompt window on it. Sell it for 1/3 the price - no IE, or explorer.exe either - maybe that will open up a market for alternative desktops.
Then ask the EC "what now, bitches?"
But competing media players and browsers are free. Why force MS CHARGE users for inferior products? They give very basic functionality, yet they are crap, so they are free.
A few eons ago - in computer time, i.e. less than 20 calendar years - the basic utilities that were considered part of the OS were a file manager perhaps a paint application etc. Well, in the age of the internet and media an OS HAS TO provide some basic functionality in these areas. How else are you going to download Opera without IE (or Firefox obviously)?
Now, if you want to go after HP, DELL etc who sell PC's with bundled software, with that bundle not including any decent browser, media player etc and yet including some crap that serves advertisements, well I say go at it. It is certainly not Microsoft's fault.
Now, the only thing you could force MS to do which would be fair, is to put a disclaimer when launching Media Player or Internet Explorer that says "this software sucks and it is here only because it comes with the OS". But then again, how could you force such a disclaimer to Media Player and not to the (not better IMO) Quicktime or a more severe disclaimer to the (much worse IMO) Real Player?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
No, they're arguing that OEMs should be able to pick what browser they want installed. And no, you don't "need" a broswer at install time - most ISPs supply CDs and many of those contain browsers. Since there's not a whole lot of point in having a web browser if you can't see the web, this would not appear to be undue hardship.
(This ignores all the other ways you can get Firefox, IceWeazel, Opera, Lynx, or other browsers. FTP still works, you've an e-mail client - Outlook - that is quite capable of receiving and processing FTP-by-mail deliveries. If you buy your computer at a store, chances are there's a shelf with shareware and freeware products, and another with commercial apps. You're likely to find a web browser on one of those. So, you see, there's options.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If Opera thinks that unbundling IE in the European market is going to make the web more standards compliant, they are dreaming. The only thing that'd make the web standards compliant is if somebody policed it and brought punishment to sites that didn't fall in line. Good luck with that, btw.
I don't think anyone is under that illusion although frankly, anything that reduces IE's market share will make the Web more standards compliant since more developers will have incentive to code to the standards. I think they're hoping more for a standards body or group of Web bowser developers to be appointed to making sure IE meets standards and any complaints about standards noncompliance in IE are addressed in a timely manner. Who knows if this will be part of the IE's remedy or not.
While running under Wine, Steam can use Gecko as its rendering engine and it works fairly well. (getting the games to work will is a whole different situation)
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
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.
What would happen if Microsoft pulled a "standard compliant" IE (or at least one that matched Firefox for complaintness) out of their ass? It would force an all new attack position for the anit-MS folks...
Nope, not going to happen...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
No,
It's more like saying this:
Me and you have a stationary business each. We supply people with stationary for their brand new desks.
You only make the stationary. I make both stationary and desks. Seeing as everybody wants my desks, I have an unfair advantage to selling my stationary, which is actually inferior to yours simply because the people are buying my desks.
However, here the situation is slightly more complex even than enforcing a free market, because the adhesion of browsers like Firefox to strict guidelines around javascript, css and many other standards has actually caused them a disadvantage in many ways.
See the comment here.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
There's already an "N" version of Windows available in the EU that comes without Media Player for some reason (notwithstanding the fact that Windows has had a media player since 1992, long before Real and the other moaners came along!)
Now, I've yet to see a copy of this "N" version for sale anywhere. OEM copies of Windows are invariably the normal version, as are the retail copies you see in retailers etc. Evem the customised pre-installed versions of Windows on say HP PCs are the normal version too. In short, nobody actually wants a deliberately-crippled version of Windows.
I bet the same would happen with an IE-less version of Windows. As long as a normal version is available then people will buy that by default. I've got a horrible mental image of loads of setup EXEs being bundled with Windows regardless, much like the junk installers for Compuserve and AOL that came with Windows 98 (or was it 95 OSR2?)
I'm more interested in the way it's only ever Microsoft that's targetted too. I wonder if the same will happen with Apple when and if their market share gets to a larger level?
Am I the only one who wonders with IE removed how would your average idiot download a browser of their choice (without command line utilities like FTP etc)? Or are we talking solely the opportunity for the OEMs in EU to load a browser of their choice in lieu of IE? Every OS in the world comes with a web browser, how is this different?
It's our responsibility as people educated in dealing with technology to help the less skilled make better tech decisions. It benefits all of us in the long run.
"Not making people care" is why there are still a lot of people out there running IE6 on Win98 sucking up a lot of available bandwidth because they are part of a spam botnet. This affects me.
So yes, I will attempt to make them care.
It's called doing the right thing. Not socialism. Caring about your fellow man (especially when it benefits you) does not make you a commie pinko. Grow the fuck up.
Read this comment. IE prevents competition, which makes things more expensice and of worse quality. The state of the web today is abysmal, since MS with its dominance has resisted change for the better. For example, they ruined ECMAScript 4 because it threatened Silverlight.