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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.'"
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
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Wont anybody think of the users. I dont want to have to make choices thats why I use Windows in the first place.
Except that, really, the Emacs option should be in the "Which Operating System Do You Want?" selection.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Advertising revenue. Look up how Mozilla Corporation makes money from partnerships with, possibly among others, Google.
1. google for this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124362706194767281.html 2. click on 1st link 3. no paywall if you come from google
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.
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.
The anti-competitive behavior is not the bundling of IE itself, but rather the conditions Microsoft imposed upon OEMs who wished to install/default to other browsers. It has at times entirely disallowed other browsers and at others given a substantial discount for making IE the only/default browser on new systems.
I don't know to what extent this crap is still the case today.
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
You can't force them to support other browsers, hell, they could only support internet explorer if they wanted to.
Your choices:
Internet Explorer 8 (Recommended)
AOL Explorer
Lynx
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
No. IE is not Explorer. I have an Nlited Windows XP, from which IE has been completely removed. Explorer works just fine without IE. Stop spreading FUD, please.
However - Explorer can be removed from XP along with IE, and replaced with some other shell. There are dozens of them available, many for free. The pretty icons, taskbar, systray, and start menus that you cite aren't even "part of the operating system", as you seem to imply.
My #1 favorite file browser is PowerDesk. I generally retain the Explorer shell, because the prettiest and best shells are proprietary, and I'm not willing to pay for them.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
You know what would really be a monopolistic practice? If they made the hardware and then forced you to use their operating system on their hardware. Thank god that doesn't happen.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...and that Microsoft has been known to 'embrace and extinguish'.
You do know that phrase originated with MS's internal discussions of illegally destroying Web browsers and Web technologies that might threaten them, right?
HOWEVER, this knee-jerk reaction to the browser-wars is really fundamentally flawed.
What knee jerk reaction. MS undermined the free market in illegal ways. Is maybe that you just don't understand the logical reactions of people to the situation and thus brand them "kneejerk". That seems implied by your later failure to understand the issues of antitrust law.
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).
Is a telephone an integral part of a telephone network? Sure. That doesn't matter because it is also a separate market from telephone service which is why AT&T can't require you to rent a telephone from them anymore, but must sell them separately from your wired connection. It's also the reason after a decade of stagnation we suddenly jumped forward and got push buttons, speed dial, and answering machines when AT&T's monopoly abuse was stopped.
The browser was and is a separate market and we're quite likely to see the same rapid innovation to the benefit of everyone as soon as MS's antitrust abuse is stopped. The thing most Slashdotters can't seem to wrap their heads around is an economic issue of markets, not a technological issue.
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."
Please do your research. We're talking about separate, preexisting markets. Of the things you mention, only the paint program applies under the law.
Go and get alternatives if you like, just as you're free to get another media player, paint program or ftp client.
Which does nothing to address the broken market or criminal acts or to improve innovation and lower costs. I have an idea, why don't you learn why antitrust laws exist before declaring them to be wrong?
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}.
I'll try to explain with an analogy. Murder is illegal. Firing a gun is legal. Firing a gun at a person in a way that murders them is illegal. Bundling is legal. Bundling in a way that undermines the free market is illegal.
In this analogy, only MS has a gun. Apple and Canonical can bundle browsers and OS's all they want because they don't even have to power undermine the market if they wanted to. Apple, on the other hand, is close to having sufficient power in the portable, digital music player market that the EU has looked into restricting them with regard to bundling things with iPods. Companies in the US and EU regularly consider antitrust issues when they have dominance in markets. The real difference here is not the way laws are applied, but that MS has so blatantly disregarded the laws everyone else obeys.
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.
Hopefully from my previous comments you now understand that no one suggests bundling is fundamentally wrong. Undermining the free market is fundamentally wrong. Bundling in particular circumstances in ways that undermine markets is what is illegal and detrimental to society.
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.
Yeah, enforcing the same
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.
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?
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.
I agree with you on that: freedom in society is probably inversely proportional to the number of regulations, although the scope of the regulations is also important. I don't know how many places outside the EU are any better however.
But an interesting question is whether you can have a free society when you have companies that can enforce monopolies. Without government interference, would Microsoft have been able to obtain a practically 100% monopoly over vast ranges of software by now? There would have been nothing to stop them eliminating most hardware that didn't restrict itself to Windows, and they would have "embraced and extended" every Internet protocol. After that it would be easy for them to require approval for any software that runs on Windows, and eliminate anything that competes with their own products.