Slashdot Mirror
EU Wants Multiple Browser Bundling On New PCs
An anonymous reader writes with a link to Ars Technica's report that "the EU is considering forcing Windows users to choose a browser to download and install before they can first browse the Internet, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). While the latest Windows 7 builds let you uninstall IE8, 'third-party browser makers like Opera, Mozilla and Google are pushing for tough sanctions against Microsoft. The EU would rather have a "ballot screen" for users to choose which browsers to download and install as well as which one to set as default. The bundling requirement might end up becoming a responsibility for manufacturers.'"
You can't force them to support other browsers, hell, they could only support internet explorer if they wanted to.
This is beginning to get out of hand.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The bundling requirement might end up becoming a responsibility for manufacturers.
This is just as stupid as forcing Microsoft to bundle alternative browser binaries with Windows.
The solution to the problem is to force Microsoft to allow OEMs to bundle other browsers with Windows the same way they do anything else. Microsoft's dictating what software can be included with Windows is the real anti-competitive behavior here -- so fix it by removing that behavior. If Dell wants to include Firefox, let them. If Opera wants to sign a deal with HP to include its browser on all their machines, let them.
Don't force all OEMs to include all browsers. That's stupid and impractical.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Came here to say this. They're about ten years too late and it won't achieve anything (in fact I think it's a bad idea at this stage).
No sig today...
those other browsers are free so who cares if Windows users are forced to use IE?
Maybe the makers of browsers which aren't free? It would at least let people know that alternatives exist and that the "blue E" isn't "the internet"
And, as Microsoft is so want to say: Free == bad, so IE must really suck.
Timothy, please next time consider the difference between the verb used in the title (EU Wants Multiple Browser Bundling On New PCs) and in TF summary (the EU is considering forcing Windows users to choose).
We don't need you to be a professional editor (even though you probably are paid for the job), but please just try not to work like a moron from a random tabloid.
Let me preface this tirade with a disclaimer: Yes, I realize Microsoft is a huge company, with enough resources and market share to constitute a monopoly, and is therefore deserving of governments' watchful eyes. I also realize that IE may not be the highest quality browser out there; and that Microsoft has been known to 'embrace and extinguish'. I'm also glad that Microsoft didn't get to design (for instance) the IMAP RFC. Please note I'm not making any _legal_ arguments, just "history-of-OS" type arguments.
HOWEVER, this knee-jerk reaction to the browser-wars is really fundamentally flawed. My argument is what we, the user, perceive as an operating system changes and grows over time. I think it's time we realize that a music jukebox, dvd player, web browser, and text editor have become integral parts of an OS (per my definition). I think it is in the same manner as a command shell, file browser (cd & ls), calendar, chat client, windowing system, network stack, etc. have become what we'd consider part of an OS.
Some companies and organizations are clamoring for inclusion of their pet projects by default... I say "rubbish. You might as well ask the user to choose different versions of the TCP stack, paint program, image libraries, and mouse drivers too." I can't make any analogies to car makers, nor do I care to. We can argue about "stifling innovation and choice" until we're blue in the face, but I still insist that a web browser is integral to the operating system. Go and get alternatives if you like, just as you're free to get another media player, paint program or ftp client.
I don't see noise directed against Apple or Linux or BSD, likely because they are {not monopolies | high enough in market share | something else that I can't grok}. This would suggest that the bundling of Safari on Mac, or Mozilla on Linux is not fundamentally wrong, and is also not wrong on Windows. I'm sure there are good arguments for the EU poking its nose, but since they're so caring, they should also ask nicely that MS provide users with choice of desktop clock widgets so that the poor makers of clock software aren't left out.
Perhaps this is unfair to the hapless (as far as tech goes) politicians, but they seem little more than shills for lobbyists, and don't seem to really understand the dangerous precedent they might be setting. That, I find really irritating.
So if I make a spyware-based browser with malicious components, will Microsoft be obliged to offer my browser to the users? Just because I compete with IE?
Yep, I'd be complaining to EU if they didn't include my browser. That would be discrimination and abuse of monopoly.
Can it get any more silly?
If you really think that this would change anything, you're naive as fuck and I got a nice bridge to sell you.
...those other browsers are free so who cares if Windows users are forced to use IE?
I do, because I'd rather be able to develop to standards and I'd rather Web technologies could move forward again instead of being held back by one, dominant, least common denominator browser.
So "all other browsers" can demand to be on the list. What's to prevent "American Adware" and "Built By Boris" (from Russian Business Network) from showing up on the list?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The last thing a consumer wants to do, when they turn on a computer, is to immediately be asked more questions. It's a pain in the rear. Sorry EU, but how about we start requiring that all cars imported from the EU to the USA have the option of being fitted with American V8s....
oh wait, that sounds like a good a idea.
Never mind.
This is my sig.
If I were MS I'd do it for them for free:
Just include a copy of lynx.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
This whole "browser war" nonsense has gone on long enough. Back when a browser was a novelty, perhaps even sold on the shelf at the store, maybe it made sense to worry about competition. However, now that the browser is essential to everyday computing and part of the platform, the demands being made entirely idiotic. It should not matter if people are given IE8 out of the gate or not. I do agree that they should be able to disable or uninstall it if they feel it's a security problem. However, forcing vendors to include other browsers is only slightly widening the selective controlled distribution and does not address any of the problems IE's dominance has caused in the first place.
Quite simply put, the reason IE is popular is because people do not care about which browser they use. A small percentage does, and it seem this site is popular with that group but at this point, a browser is part of a platform as a steering wheel is part of a car. Occasionally an enthusiast replaces his steering wheel but most people don't care about it.
But what does a steering wheel have in common with browsers besides being a platform staple? They support standards. The steering wheel is a standard interface, and while they do vary from car to car, they all support a common baseline of functionality and features.
So the real solution to this IE problem is not to force a company to support their competition. No I vehemently disagree with that, it's simply wrong to force a company to collude with their competition. Instead, the solution is to enforce IE's support of recognized standards. If you truly wish to neuter Microsoft's control of the WWW, then limit them to implementing standards compliant browsing only, let the community and the market decide what that means, and then let people continue to make their own choices about browsers.
Frankly if you look at all platforms, not just personal computer platforms, you will see that they all include their own browser choice, whether it be a Linux based OS that includes firefox, or a smartphone that includes a webkit based browser like Nokia's S60 platform. Macs include Safari, my Wii came with a free Opera download, my DSi came with a free opera download, and my PS3 includes a browser based on the same tech they use for their feature cell phones.
So targeting microsoft just because this mattered 10 years ago is pretty ridiculous, especially when you're failing to target the real problem in the first place.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
It's not fair that General Motors put only their own radio in my Malibu.
Worse, they tied my Chevy's radio to the operating system: the volume turns up when the car goes faster, and it knows which key fob I used to unlock the doors. This is anticompetitive and monopolist.
I demand that GM install multiple radios -- one each from Ford, Chrysler, Bosch, Blaupunkt, and Kraco, plus an open-source handwired crystal receiver from Heathkit -- and I demand that they print the wiring diagram on the hood (so I can design my own radio anytime I come down off the Percocet).
Every time I start the car, I should be presented with a menu allowing me to choose which will serve as the "default radio."
Which is one reason of the smaller reasons I don't like Linux. I don't want to waste lots of time install all the junk that comes with it. Atleast with the OEM junk, a format and reinstall will clear it. But unbuntu includes it in the cd!
If you were literate, you might understand that no one is requiring Microsoft to support other browsers. Microsoft is being required to make options available.
Why is this Microsoft's problem and not that of the OEMs selling the computers ?
And so you are killing ONE monopoly(IE) and strengthening another (Google). Does that make any sense? And it wasn't like it was hard to toss IE before. hell every new PC build I do here in the shop composes three steps when I have the desktop up. 1-plug in flash. 2-Install Firefox 3- Toss IE Icon in the trash and replace with Firefox Icon, which i load with ABP and Forecast Fox, which my customers really love.
To me this is just the EU being really fucking dumb, yet again. Anybody remember XP-N? For those that hadn't heard of it, the EU forced MSFT to make an sell a version of XP with no media player called XP-N. I'm sure there is a landfill in Eastern Europe filled with XP-N discs because the retailers said they couldn't give them away and it was more worthless than an AOL CD. And what if you don't have the Internet up yet,hmmm? Most routers require a browser to do the initial config. So if i am in the EU I have the choice of plugging my Windows machine straight into the net(and get boned) or not having the net at all because I can't set my router until i download a browser, which i can't do without setting my router. Gee, I wonder how many other ways this can go wrong? Dumb EU, just dumb.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The first thing that I want a brand new Windows installation to do is download the latest security patches. Downloading a web browser should come after that.
OEMs pick image organisers for their users: also fine
OEMs pick ISP software for their users: no problem
OEMs are given the opportunity to pick browsers for their users: *shitstorm*
To me this looks like the media trolling for attention; in the real world OEMs will either bundle IE or IE + firefox, and no end user will notice any difference...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Come back after you've spent a week making a really nice, easy to use, easy on the eyes website to standards, then spent another week making it work in IE7, then another 3 weeks making it work in IE6 (yes lots of people still use that P.OS.)!
Once you've done that, go to a country back east where ALL the banks got suckered into using ActiveX for their online transactions.
THEN you can come back here and ask how bundling IE with windows hurt anyone.
I would just LOVE to, when installing Windows, have to sit through a dozen screens asking me "hey which browser do you want, hey which text editor do you want, hey which music player do you want, hey which chat software do you want...". NOT. FUCK YOU EU, your whole court system is a bunch of money-grubbing morons.
The Mozilla Foundation makes many tens of millions of dollars from Google. If nobody installs Firefox, Google isn't going to be giving them that kind of money anymore.
Now that Google has its own platform in Chrome why does it need Mozilla?
Why exactly would an OEM want to do this?
It's not like bundling Firefox with their PC is going to increase their sales or profit. If Opera were going to pay them to bundle their browser, they would have done it by now (as someone has already pointed out, Microsoft doesn't prevent this).
In short, I really cannot see any OEM's bothering to do this - and so nothing will change.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Google is not a monopoly. Stop pretending it is one.
Having a choice as to what web browser to use is more important than you think. People will use the default one, which is a big part of how IE got such a large market share.
That's because the case has been grinding on for a long, long time. Microsoft have been messing about trying to evade a series of judgements for years and years. Do we now want to send them the message 'Avoid complying with the law for long enough that the progress of technology renders the question irrelevant, and then there will be no consequences'? Or do we want to penalise them so that the next time something like this happens, the offender actually complies immediately rather than delaying for the best part of a decade?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
People do have a choice. Stop pretending they don't.
If people really hated IE, they could switch. They just don't care enough to bother. That's not Microsoft's fault.
Everyone knows that the reason the majority of (non-technical) users don't change their browser is that they never see a need to change from IE, or don't even understand what a browser is. (Then there's the millions of corporate machines still running IE6, but we won't go there). This leaves a (thankfully shrinking) majority of net users using the least standards compliant browser, which probably would have less users than Opera if it wasn't bundled with Windows.
A pop-up box that lets you choose between IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari will massively increase the market share of the other players, and the average user will soon learn that IE is really not that great. Hopefully, the real achievement of this scheme will be to force MSFT to create a solid, standards compliant browser. To their credit, they're already starting to move in this direction, but it'll take some actual free market competition to really push this along. I can't wait.
I really don't see why the browser should be such a priority, it is easier to install Firefox than another OS and Windows is more dominant in the OS market than MSIE in the browser market.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Come back after you've spent a week making a really nice, easy to use, easy on the eyes website to standards, then spent another week making it work in IE7, then another 3 weeks making it work in IE6 (yes lots of people still use that P.OS.)!
Once you've done that, go to a country back east where ALL the banks got suckered into using ActiveX for their online transactions.
THEN you can come back here and ask how bundling IE with windows hurt anyone.
I can understand your frustration, I have been there. While I generally don't think that a company should be forced to bundle a competitor's products. However, Windows has what? ... a 90% market share on desktops? When a company has established market dominance to the point where it's OS is practically the only product on the market, it is bundling software with it's OS and it has a history of using bundling to aggressively to kill off it's competition, IMHO the rules change. So perhaps a "ballot screen" option like this isn't such a bad idea.
Just my 0,02€
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
To me this is just the EU being really fucking dumb, yet again. Anybody remember XP-N? For those that hadn't heard of it, the EU forced MSFT to make an sell a version of XP with no media player called XP-N. I'm sure there is a landfill in Eastern Europe filled with XP-N discs because the retailers said they couldn't give them away and it was more worthless than an AOL CD.
To be fair, Microsoft made that situation way worse than it had to be. They completely stripped out compatibility with windows media videos, when they didn't have to(Proof: nLite), with the argument that they had to. (which was bullshit)
And instead of offering choices of which media player to use, they offered... nothing. They torpedoed the EU's demands on purpose to make them look bad. Very childish, although I suppose if I were being sued by them for hundreds of millions of dollars, I may have done the same. :P
Personally, I do wish IE would just die. But the big problem is that it is the ONLY browser series to mockingly flaunt standards to the point where websites need to be specially coded just to work with it. If IE had a low market share, companies would not be pressured to code for it and would then code to standard (that's what the standards are for, right?). If IE would obey the already long-established standards, there wouldn't be a problem.
Its called capitalism. Holy crap, its working!
*looks around*
*sees worldwide economic depression*
Oh yeah, it's working really well.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
As far as I am concerned, this is pretty much a non-issue. If the EU intends to on creating a true-choice landscape (which wouldn't be a bad thing) they'd go for the OEM's by requiring them to have blank computers as default. If Windows is desired by the customer, they should ship an extra-cost retail copy of it (which would also take care of the recovery disk BS). Likewise for any other OS (Linux could be shipped on a simple CD if no retail box exists). This would offer true choices as well in regards to wants and needs of the customer, capabilities of the OS and the true cost associated with said choice.
Further a compatibility test suite should be developed, by which all OS' and their preinstalled applications should be subjected to. For example, the installed browsers (I really don't care which one) need to comply in full to a set of published web standards. The current test result status of the various offerings can easily be displayed on some web site for reference. Office Suites need to be *fully* compatible in regards to some base formats (OpenDocument lends itself nicely, as well as PDF) and rigorous testing needs to take place. If they fail to read/write/import a document from another standards-compliant suite without farking everything up, it should be tossed out as a possible default installation for OEM's and if installed anyway, the OEM sanctioned. Ditto for e-mail etc.
Only such enforced base-line measures could possibly make a real difference by requiring inter-operability standards regardless of OS and application and get rid of the mess we're in with monopoly abuses and vendor-lock-in etc..
I really don't know how your comment can be considered insightful
1) This is just a proposal so its very hard to criticise right now, however many people have recommended similar plans.
2) The whole point is to remove MS form the equation, let Manufacturers decide what to install as they are not invested in the software business.
3) So your only real hope is to convince HP, Dell or whoever, that your browser creates some added value and therefore they will get more sales, Google, Mozilla and Opera are betting that they can win this argument. You have the right to do the same.
Goodness knows why anyone would tag your comment insightful.
Nobody is suggesting that your browser should be included with MS.
Read the article again and try to understand what it says. If it isn't your first language, get someone to help you. Make sure you're sobered up first though.