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EU Could Force Bundling Firefox With Windows
Barence writes "The European Commission could force Microsoft to bundle Firefox with future versions of Windows. The revelation came as part of Microsoft's quarterly filing with the Security and Exchange Commission. Among the statements is a clause outlining the penalties being considered by the European watchdog, which recently ruled that Microsoft is harming competition by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. The most interesting situation outlined in the filing would see either Microsoft or computer manufacturers forced to install Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari by default alongside Internet Explorer on new Windows-based PCs."
What about MacOS X and Safari? Why isn't the EU going after Apple? And on that note, why am I FORCED to use Safari on my iPod Touch? Me thinks the EU needs to take a good long look at Apple if they are going to sanction Microsoft!
1 - Microsoft will have to agree to install Firefox by default in the EU to avoid even more fines.
2 - They will insist that IE is still installed too, as it's baked so deep into Windows that it'd require a hefty rewrite to remove, not to mention their spyware / update system demands Active X, which only they know how to implement.
3 - They will insist on installing it themselves, and install a modified version which will be buggy as hell, take up oodles of resources and crash like a plane which finds it's engines mysteriously vanish mid-flight.
4 - As part of the modified Firefox all crashes will point to microsoft.com "advice" about how IE is perfect and crash-free, and advise them to start using it.
5 - They'll also insist that IE is the default browser, even if a broken Firefox is there too.
6 - They'll disable all of the security features of their Firefox build, make some defaults unable to be changed, all to give people a bad impression of Firefox.
7 - They'll start the FUD campaign exposing the flaws (they added) against their magnificent IE.
8 - They'll insist that the Firefox pre-installed is the very same as everyone else's Firefox, so all the flaws are Mozilla's, not theirs.
9 - In a few years another lawsuit will reveal this collusion, and history will start to repeat again......as it always does with Microsoft.
To the M$ shills astroturfung at /.
Feel free to mark this as flamebait, many companies make mistakes and learn from them. Many companies have bad leadership and make big mistakes; in most cases the company starts to change after being punished and the CEO involved is removed. Microsoft are 100% unrepentant in everything they do, they see nothing wrong in what they do, the only thing they see as "wrong" is people standing up to them and holding them to account. They deserve NO benefit of the doubt.
So it's OK for Microsoft to illegally force themselves on people, but it is not OK for someone to protest? Opera never made any demands to be forced on anyone. Opera simply wants actual competition.
How is anyone forced to use IE, then? Since I can install any browser I want on my copy of Windows, I'm certainly not forced to use IE (excepting the times when FF doesn't work properly with a website), I can use my browser of choice. Just because it's installed in the OS doesn't mean I have to use it. If Opera wants actual competition: a) advertise their product and b) make it compelling enough for people to switch. I look at Opera every few years, and to this day have found not a single reason to switch (from Firefox).
Now, here comes the argument that goes something along the lines of "new users don't know about alternative browsers, and by getting IE with their OS, they're "forced" into using it through ignorance". To that argument I call "bullshit". If the user is really that concerned about their browser choice, they'll find out about others and use them. If they're not, why make it more difficult on them? Let's face it, if they're on the Internet and haven't heard of Firefox within the first 15 minutes of getting online, they're probably not skilled enough to make that choice the first time they boot their OS anyway.
This is going to be just like the version of Windows Microsoft was forced to sell that didn't include Media Player...no one bought it.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Of course new versions of Windows will come with newer versions of IE anyways, and IE8 is approaching "reasonably standards compliant" to some degree, so the argument of standards is kind of specious.
Bullshit. They aren't even close to any other major browser let alone the cutting edge ones. Take a look at the my response to the last commenter to this to see specific dates and standards.
Firefox isn't standards compliant either, and it's getting to the point where choosing browsers means choosing between different non-standards compliance.
No browser is 100% standards compliant, but all the other ones are so much further along than IE that your equivocation is laughable. Beside that, they don't have to be standards complaint because the Web itself is not. It is broken because the one browser that most people use, which ships with Windows is so broken there is little point in using newer technologies. Who spends money making Web pages only 30% of users can use? By forcing IE to standards compliance or forcing it out of the position of being the only one bundled you restore competition so if IE doesn't work, users still have something that does. This motivates browser developers to move forward with new technologies and Web page developers to use them. That's the point.
Opera has never spent a lot of time trying to be compatible with IE anyways.
Yeah they've only wasted millions on it instead of hundreds of millions. You just admitted, I might mention, that one of their major problems is lack of compatibility with broken pages MS memos reveal they intentionally set out to make broken to prevent people from being able to compete. That's a crime.