Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.