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Microsoft Will Ship Windows 7 in Europe With IE Unbundled

Posted by timothy on from the when-bureaucrats-slither dept.

jimmi_hendrix was one of several people to note CNET's report that 'Microsoft plans to remove Internet Explorer from the versions of Windows 7 that it ships in Europe, CNET News has learned. Reacting to antitrust concerns expressed by European regulators, Microsoft plans to offer a version in Europe that has the browser removed. Computer makers would then have the option to add the browser back in, ship another browser or ship multiple browsers, according to a confidential memo that was sent to PC makers and seen by CNET News." There's also a report at Ars Technica.

6 of 578 comments (clear)

  1. Why are we deprived of this in North America? by TropicalCoder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm jealous - we should be offered the same deal here in good old North America

  2. HugeOrNot by alain94040 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it just me or is this huge?

    We'll finally be able to measure IE's marketshare in a non-biased market.

    1. Re:HugeOrNot by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We'll finally be able to measure IE's marketshare in a non-biased market.

      Not really. Many years of a broken market have created a huge number of Websites and Web applications broken to only work properly with IE. Unless this is remedied, we'll only have a slightly less broken market. Additionally, this applies only to the EU, so any company doing business anyplace outside the EU or Web developers wanting to target customers outside the EU will still be subject to artificial market incentives caused by MS's bundling elsewhere.

  3. Re:Getting Firefox? by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is what a governing body demanded. It doesn't have to make sense.

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    The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
  4. This will be hell by Useful+Wheat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm going to guess that this statement applies to most of the people on slashdot.

    "I provide tech support to my friends and family."

    Doesn't it chill your blood to imagine that you could very suddenly be in a situation where every single person you know who gets a new computer is going to need you to set it up? They will be totally and completely helpless without Internet explorer, they won't be able to burn it to a CD or put it on a flash drive without your detailed instructions.

    And then it won't work. And it won't be what they're used to be because FireFox/chrome/IE 8 isn't IE 6. And then you'll have to come over again to explain that the download manager isn't stealing their awful FWD: jokes.

    This isn't progress, this is a punishment to each and every one of us.

  5. Here we go again by hkmwbz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Cue hundreds of comments like "why can Apple bundle a browser but not Microsoft" (Apple is not in the same dominant position, and didn't break the law), "EU is a bunch of commie bastards" (ignoring the fact that the US has the exact same antitrust laws as well), and so on. It's the same old drivel every single time. It's as if there is a legion of Microsoft shills just waiting in line to post the same fallacies over and over again every time someone posts about the EU antitrust case. I can't believe that some people still don't get the basic facts of this case.

    Sigh.

    --
    Clever signature text goes here.