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EC To Pursue Antitrust Despite Microsoft's IE Move
snydeq writes "The European Commission will proceed with its antitrust case against Microsoft regardless of Microsoft's decision to strip IE from Windows 7 in Europe. Europe's top antitrust regulator said the EC would draw up a remedy that allows computer users 'genuine consumer choice,' noting that stripping out IE from Windows 'may potentially be positive,' but 'rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less.' Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, whose complaint to the European Commission at the end of 2007 sparked the initial antitrust investigation, said Microsoft is 'trying to set the remedy itself by stripping out IE. ... Now that Microsoft has acknowledged it has been breaking the law by bundling IE into Windows, the Commission must push ahead with an effective remedy,' he said."
MS's plan is to allow OEMs to include whatever browser they want in the EU version of Windows. No manufacturer is going to be foolish enough to ship a system without some sort of browser installed.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Because Microsoft used illegal tactics to gain that market share. They forbid OEM's to bundle Netscape with Windows, which means they used their monopoly on the home OS market to get a monopoly in another market. This is illegal and should not go unpunished. Not even when Microsoft tactics delayed the whole process for ten years.
The EU does the same thing to European companies that refuse to obey the law.
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
I suppose the silver lining is that we'll still be able to open any old Explorer window (you know, the file manager thingy, not IE) and just type a URL there. IE is too deeply tied into Windows to really remove it altogether; my guess is that the only change will be the disappearance of the blue "e" icon.
They've already de-coupled that particular feature in Vista. Not because of the "monopoly" crap, but so they could run IE in a sandbox environment for security purposes. Typing a URL in an explorer bar now just opens the URL in your default browser, instead of turning the explorer window into an IE window.
(Come on, people Vista was released OVER TWO YEARS AGO, please update the rhetoric.)
Comment of the year
There is money to be made through search provider revenue (Mozilla, Opera) and donations (Mozilla).
Ok, Microsoft is found guilty of abusing its position of controlling the currently most popular PC OS on the market. Through bundling and anti-competitive practices they're nailed for being a monopoly.
They were nailed for abusing a monopoly, not being one.
The media player gets stripped out per an earlier EC case.
But the media player wasn't stripped out. It was removed from a special version of Windows while people who bought that version still had to pay for it. It was functionally no different than throwing the player away and failed miserably to remedy the market imbalance. That market is still horribly broken (for numerous reasons).
Now, in 2007, Opera complains about the browser bundling, saying that it gives Microsoft an unfair advantage in the browser wars. The EC says "Yeah, you're right! Ok MS, take out the bundled browser"
WRONG! The EU said no such thing. They said they think MS is guilty and started looking for ways to undo the damage MS had done over the years. MS then said they were pulling IE from the next version of Windows voluntarily in the hopes the EU would not impose a harsher and more effective punishment and remedy.
...what they REALLY wanted Microsoft to do was to bundle a competing product with the base OS. They don't want a level playing field, they want to tip the scales in their favor (specifically to Opera).
Opera doesn't even want their browser bundled with Windows. They primarily make money licensing the mobile version. They want the market fixed so they don't have to spend millions engineering around broken Web pages that were the intentional result of MS's crime. The EU wants the market restored to competition. Just stopping a crime does not solve the damage done by it. It's like if a person stabs you then when the cops show up they pull out the knife and say, "see I stopped, it's all good". In such a situation is it "unfair" and "biased" if the police throw the stabber in prison and make them pay the medical bills of the victim?
Let the OEMs decide what browser to install on a system.
It's way, way, way too late for that. OEMs have a vested interest in supporting fewer applications. OEMs have a vested interest in stalling IE since only it can deal with the broken IE only pages and applications on the Web. That is a direct result of a criminal action. It's like letting the robber keep all the money they stole so long as they stop. It is far too little, far too late.
Considering current browser usage statistics, I think the entire browser monopoly concept is antiquated.
You're completely ignorant. This isn't about a browser monopoly. It's about their browser having an unfair market share because of leveraging of a desktop OS monopoly. If you don't even know what crime MS committed how can you sit here and tell us why the punishment for that crime is not suitable?
What this really feels like is...
...Incredible ignorance or astroturfing.
Others have pointed out that MS is being treated as a special case because it is a special case; neither Apple nor Canonical enjoy Microsoft's monopoly position. They did a good enough job of that; I just wanted to address another portion of your post.
I really don't know much about OSX so I'll limit my comment to Linux. I use a Gentoo Linux system and these are some of the Web browsers available to me: Chromium (Open Source version of Google's Chrome), Epiphany, Galeon, Firefox, Seamonkey, Opera and Konqueror. Epiphany, Galeon, Seamonkey, and Firefox all use the Mozilla rendering engine while the others do not. This is Gentoo so by default there is no GUI browser installed; you have to pick one (or more). All of them are installed, updated, and uninstalled through the same package manager.
Ubuntu has different goals than does Gentoo, but everything I said about Gentoo browser selection applies to Ubuntu. The only difference is that Ubuntu comes with a browser already installed by default. However, that browser can be uninstalled and replaced (as well as have any updates taken care of) with a single interface, which is Ubuntu's own package manager.
To compare that Linux situation with Microsoft, Windows, and IE is intellectually dishonest to be frank with you. For that to be a valid comparison, Microsoft would need a centalized package manager through which most or all of your programs and utilities can be installed and removed, with no regard for who makes those programs. Then, IE would be just another option the user can easily choose; maybe it is the default but is still listed side-by-side with the other options. Then there would be a meaningful comparison but right now there is only contrast. Of course, if it were done this way, there probably wouldn't be a browser-related anti-trust case to begin with.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein