Slashdot Mirror
EU Accepts Microsoft's Browser Choice Promise
itwbennett writes "Hurrah! The European Commission's antitrust investigation of Microsoft's position in the browser market is over. The EC has accepted Microsoft's commitment to offer users of 'Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 a choice screen through which they can pick the browsers they want to install on their PC,' writes Peter Sayer in an article on ITworld. 'The screen will be offered to users in the European Union and some neighboring countries for the next five years via the Windows Update mechanism. In addition, PC manufacturers will be allowed to ship computers with competing Web browsers, as well as or instead of Internet Explorer.'"
Anti-competitive behaviour is not like murder. That's an unfair comparison.
MS was fined 1.3 billion for past behaviour. This promise is needed for them not to get future fines:
http://slashdot.org/yro/08/02/27/1152208.shtml?tid=98
Vista and Windows 7 don't use IE for Microsoft Update, but nice try.
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
IE8 is certainly a step in the right direction, and I will be so happy when IE6 finally eats flaming death; but there are still glaring omissions. Not that any browser is a model citizen in this regard, but IE is definitely worst. Now I'm aware that it is possible to work your way around the differences, I just finished a library to be used internally that emulates W3C-compliant DOM events in IE; but I'd rather spend my time doing actual development than working around browser bugs (which 99% of the time are caused by various incarnations of IE).
You haven't been working much in a corporate environment, have you?
This is blinging