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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."
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!
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FairSoftware.net -- where geeks are their own boss
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.
How am I supposed to download Firefox then?!!? FTP? c'mon!
how long until
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.
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
If Ubuntu shipped on the vast majority of personal computers, then yes it might.
They are an operating system monopoly, and they can and DO leverage that to create unfair advantages in new markets.
Monopolies have to play by different rules. That is what gives the governments the right to tell them what they can and cannot load.
Since Ubuntu don't make Firefox, I doubt it.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
IE was a massive money pit for Microsoft, and its only purpose was to protect Windows as the dominant application platform. It worked.
But with the rise of Web 2.0 and hand helds like Blackberry and iPhone, Windows is no longer the dominant application platform -- no one is actually building applications for Windows anymore, as far as startups are concerned, it's a "dead" platform.
Therefore whether Windows ships with IE or not is now moot. No one (with the exception of Opera) is trying to make money that way anymore. That ship has sailed.
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.
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?
If Ubuntu shipped on the vast majority of personal computers, then yes it might.
What's the legal difference?
34. Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows.
Tim S
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.
I'll take these kind of actions seriously when: .doc format anymore (although with OO this is less of a problem)
- I don't need the Media Player for listening to state sponsored radio programs or television shows.
- Local governments don't rely on the
- 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.
No Windows cannot load whatever it wants to on their Operating Systems.
er... yes it can.
It's still an open platform that runs any code you throw at it, provided it's compatible. The claim that Windows itself is a monopoly is complete and utter bollocks.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
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
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. ?
Anti-trust laws are in place to keep corporations from screwing the consumer by keeping prices and such down when there's no competition. That's why mergers are looked at so closely and why the Sirius-XM merger was almost cockblocked. They were afraid that the prices would go through the roof because they were the only two satellite radio companies and their merger would end all competition.
Microsoft's inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows is not an anti-trust matter. Where is the harm to the consumer? I don't see any. In fact, removing Internet Explorer from Windows would be a burden to the consumer. Even though I'm an experienced Windows user, I didn't even know it came with built-in FTP support, let alone would I know how to use it. What the fuck is Opera trying to pull here? Anybody who uses Internet Explorer anyway would just get it from Microsoft's site. Does Opera think they will gain more market share? NOBODY HAS EVEN HEARD OF OPERA. To be honest, Opera is just alienating their potential users by coming up with this retarded lawsuit which will harm consumers more than it helps their market share.
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?
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.).
It only applies to pre-existing separate markets. That is, someone has to be selling or in some way making money selling that component separately at the time MS starts bundling it.
Does MS have to strip out features every times someone calls foul? How far will it go... Where's the line?
Does no one learn the basics of antitrust law in Econ anymore?
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?
MS doesn't sell computers. MS sells computer components and OEMs build complete systems. It's like if Nvidia managed to monopolize the graphics card market, then started making LCDs integrated with the video card and required all computer manufacturers to buy them as a bundle. If Dell wanted to use a different, cheaper or better LCD they could always throw away the one they were forced to buy right? That wouldn't be unfair to current LCD and monitor makers would it? After all people don't think a computer is complete without and LCD.
Legally, Dell and HP and Sony and other OEMs need to not only be allowed to choose which components to put into their computers, but in the case of monopolies they have to have no influence by the monopoly to include multiple components because one is monopolized. Right now they have a lot of incentives to include a substandard browser with every computer the sell and that has resulted in the Web advancing very, very slowly for a long time.
MS isn't evil for bundling, but they are criminals and many time repeat offenders at that. You may be confused about antitrust law, but their lawyers sure aren't They built their business model on breaking those laws and counting on the profits to be bigger than the bribes and settlements and fines. Basically, they bet their money was more powerful than the courts and so far they've been right. They're criminals and they've retarded the development of the Web and of innovation just for a few more bucks.
On a related note, will Apple have to stop including Safari with OS X?
Why? Do you think they've monopolized the desktop OS market or the Web browser market? Or do you just not understand antitrust law at all and haven't bothered listening to the dozens of explanations people write every time this issue comes up?
It was once true that you couldn't buy the Macintosh OS on its own, but it has been possible to buy OSX without an Apple computer for some time now. Example at amazon.
They should also take notice that XP N (XP with no media player) had next to zero sales. Part of the reason is that apps wouldn't work without it. Why? Goes like this:
So media player, and IE as well, are actually split in two. There's the actual app you run. That doesn't really do much. It's just a user interface. You can get different ones. Media Player Classic would be a media player example. The actual work is then done by a separate set of DLLs that anything can call. So the media player stuff is the system media playback interface. It is similar to what Quicktime is on a Mac (but not on Windows).
When MS first took media player out, they just removed the executable. However the EU didn't like that, said it all had to go. They complied. However this means whenever something used media player to play back it's stuff, it broke. Make games were like that. Some included their own stuff, many just used the included Windows stuff. Quicktime and Realplayer didn't help. They aren't full out media layers, they are just players for their formats.
Well, it's the same for IE. Some programs rely on it. Stardock's Impulse would be an example. It's nearly all HTML and uses the IE DLLs to render it. So if you remove those, programs like Impulse break. Firefox is not a drop in replacement, it doesn't provide the same services in the same way. Now if they don't do that and just remove the EXE, well then that's no different than now, where access to it can be disabled.
Modern desktop OSes do a whole lot more than just provide access to a disk. They provide rich sets of services that many apps make use of. To remove those is to break the apps that need them. Microsoft isn't the only company that does this. Take a look at OS-X. There are many features built in to the OS. They could technically be removed, but that'd break any app that uses them.
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?
Now that Qt is LGPL and includes webkit, the only advantage to using embedded IE is legacy code and its quirks. Hopefully people will catch on, because it seems like an obvious win for everyone.