Microsoft Giving Rival Browsers a Lift

gollum123 tips an article at the NY Times on the progress of the European Windows browser choice screen that we have been discussing recently. "Rivals of Microsoft's market-leading Web browser have attracted a flurry of interest since the company, fulfilling a regulatory requirement, started making it easier for European users of its Windows operating system to switch. Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is the strongest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer worldwide, said that more than 50,000 people had downloaded Firefox via a 'choice screen' that has been popping up on Windows-equipped computers in Europe since the end of last month. ... Opera Software, based in Oslo, said downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland, and Spain had tripled since the screen began to appear. Microsoft said it was too early to tell whether the choice screen might prompt significant numbers of users to change. The digital ballot is being delivered over the Internet with software updates, and it is expected to take until mid-May to complete the process. The browser choice will also be presented to buyers of new Windows computers across the European Union for five years."

Comments

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[bsDaemon]

I tried Oepra recently on Snow Leopard and saw no ads in the browser itself, unless I'm just so used to seeing ads on the web that I just mentally blocked them out. I didn't like it anyway and stopped using it after a giving it a shake for a couple of weeks, though.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[SCVirus]

Opera hasn't had ads for years. It is totally free as in beer.

September 20, 2005
Opera Software today permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes there haven't been ads since 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_browser#History

BTW

[Anonymous Coward]

The script on that page uses a proper shuffle algorithm now (Fisher-Yates/Durstenfeld). If the page is viewed without Javascript, the order is fixed though, with IE being in the leftmost spot...

Re:BTW

[biryokumaru]

I have to wonder, why would a brand new installation of Windows have javascript turned off?

Re:BTW

[hedwards]

Sensible default? I'd think the better question would be why does a brand new installation of Windows have javascript at all if none of the browsers are installed.

When I think about it, on some level it seems wrong that browsers default to having javascript enabled and to doing stupid things like saving form data. At very least make those things options available to turn on during the first time you open the browser. Or more specifically directing you to do it yourself with adequate instructions.

Re:BTW

[donaggie03]

I knew javascript was used on a lot more pages lately, but I had no idea just how much it is used until I installed noscript. Now I find myself constantly re-enabling various webpages when I need that functionality.

Re:BTW

[digitalunity]

Windows script host is an integral part of the windows operating system. Most scripted automation tasks rely on it in Windows.

WSH, by default supports both JScript and VBScript.

Re:BTW

[TheLink]

Even if it's on, over a slower internet connection, you briefly see IE in the leftmost spot. This is suboptimal for choice.

But anyway, it does seem to be working - people are trying out other browsers.

It may also show how trusting and confident people are about downloading new software, installing it and running it on their systems...

Re:BTW

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I knew javascript was used on a lot more pages lately, but I had no idea just how much it is used until I installed noscript. Now I find myself constantly re-enabling various webpages when I need that functionality.

I've had the exact reverse experience. There are a handful of pages that I've had to enable javascript for, almost all the others don't need it - although they might look prettier with it (slashdot being one such example). Occasionally I will run into a page that won't work right, but unless it is really important, I just move on to another similar page rather than enable javascript.

Re:BTW

[Runaway1956]

I want to surf the web without javascript, so I just install No-Script. On every web page, I get a popup telling me that trash is being blocked. If/when I think that I MIGHT want to see some of the trash, I selectively enable the stuff being blocked. I never enable cross site scripting.

Is this 1998, or what?

Re:BTW

[JackieBrown]

I have the same experience. In fact, I am able to disable my adblock extension since most of the annoying add use javascrip to display.

The only real excecptions being my bank and newssites that have comments plus a few forums.

Re:BTW

[jonadab]

> why would a brand new installation of Windows have javascript turned off?

Security reasons. Windows Server 2008, for example, has IE pretty locked down by default.

Re:BTW

[Bert64]

Why would a "server" os even have a web browser installed by default?

Re:BTW

[buchner.johannes]

The update is also delivered to existing installations.

Re:BTW

[IcI]

Why is nobody talking about the other browsers off to the right?

The ones that don't get randomized unless they are in the visible area when you hit the refresh button.

If you want diversity & true choice (like we generally claim), then these other browsers must be randomized in the list too.

Re:BTW

[jonadab]

> Why would a "server" os even have a web browser installed by default?

If you do server administration the way most Windows admins do (wherein you have an actual monitor and keyboard hooked up to the server and physically go there and use the GUI on the server to do administrative tasks, among other things), you end up needing a web browser for certain things. You use it to manage Reporting Services, install report files (that you develop in Visual Studio and want to install in RS so that the appropriate users can have access to them), and so on. You use the browser to read certain things (e.g., knowledge base articles) on the internet, and to read other things from the local hard drive (e.g., the documentation "books" that come with some of Microsoft's server software). There are assorted other things. Until relatively recently you even needed it to install security updates; fortunately that's no longer necessary in current versions of Windows.

But while Windows Server comes with IE installed by default, it's also pretty well locked down by default. I don't think any Javascript is enabled at all, for instance, even for documents viewed from the local hard drive. If the administrator starts relaxing the security so he can use the server for general-purpose browsing (and granted, some people DO do this), we can hardly blame Microsoft for that. Note that it's not simply a matter of clicking the blue e and clicking "yes" without reading a dialog box. To get Javascript and similar risky stuff turned on you actually have to deliberately relax the security settings. If you have anywhere near enough brains to be a server admin you would certainly know that you are trading off security for the ability to browse the web on the server. If you have anywhere near enough paranoia to be a good server admin, you don't do it.

Sure, being administered mostly through the GUI and often directly and having a browser installed on the server and so on and so forth is not the way I would have designed a server OS. Honestly, though, I don't think having the browser installed on Windows Server by default is a very big deal, in the scheme of things. When it comes to Windows server security, there are bigger fish to fry, IMO.

Re:BTW

[ricebowl]

And, interestingly enough, the 'makers of small web browsers' now want their browsers to be more prominently displayed: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8551317.stm. Random clearly isn't enough.

Sigh. I do agree that all browsers should be given equal prominence/visibility, but at some point, surely, people have to accept limitations in screen real-estate?

Re:BTW

[Nadaka]

I somewhat doubt that how most windows server admins interface with their servers. My limited exposure saw them using remote desktop sessions most of the time, only going into the server room to plug in keyboard and monitor when it would not respond remotely. The developer cube farm I worked in had a view of the server room through an huge window, many blinken lights and stupidly loud air conditioning.

informed decisions?

[bsDaemon]

Not being from Europe, and also having no intention to use Windows 7 any time in the near future, I haven't seen this "choice screen" until I just searched for a screen shot of it. There appear to be little one-line descriptions, but nothing really substantive from which to base a choice upon if you didn't already know the differences between the browsers to some degree anyway (in which case, you'd have probably downloaded whichever one you want to use separately regardless of this court-mandated action). So, to my question: is there any way to measure how many of these downloads were due to users making an informed choice rather than just "clicking something" like they do with the "next" button on most graphical installers? And what happens if you just click "select later?" Does it still install IE and default to that?

Re:informed decisions?

[Anonymous Coward]

The choice screen is turning out to be a complete mess. I have friends/family calling me saying their "internet" is different, and they don't know what to do. As usual, the uninformed are just clicking away until the pop-ups disappear. Although most people on /. might say IE is the root of all evil, something in me thinks this should have been an opt-in for current users & required during a Win7 installation.

Re:informed decisions?

[shutdown -p now]

There is a "find out more" link under every browser description in the selection screen.

That said, of all browsers, IE seems to have the most coherent and persuasive page linked from there.

Re:informed decisions?

[hedwards]

That would be the reason why the change was necessary. MS doesn't do a particularly responsible job of supporting IE, and way too many people think that IE is the internet and Outlook is email.

I doubt this will change much other than possibly making it so that fewer people that don't want/need IE have it on their computer and possibly making MS provide a better option for updates rather than via an activex website.

Re:informed decisions?

[techno-vampire]

That said, of all browsers, IE seems to have the most coherent and persuasive page linked from there.

This leads me to ask who wrote the descriptions of the various browsers.

Re:informed decisions?

[digitalunity]

Indeed. I helped my girlfriend's mother access a website and she was freaking out saying she broke the internet. I walked her through getting to the website she wanted to see without getting sent to a phishing site(she clicked a bad link in an email to her bank).

She simply could not get her head around the concept of distinguishing between IE and the internet. To her, IE IS the internet. To her, you can't see websites without IE.

Re:informed decisions?

[shutdown -p now]

This leads me to ask who wrote the descriptions of the various browsers.

It's something that is trivial to find out on your own. Here is the ballot page. If you click on "Tell me more" buttons, you'll see that all links lead to web pages hosted on a domain owned the company behind the browser (mozilla.com, apple.com, opera.com, google.com etc).

Sorry if that didn't provide any substance to yet another "evil MS" conspiracy theory...

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

That would be the reason why the change was necessary. MS doesn't do a particularly responsible job of supporting IE, and way too many people think that IE is the internet and Outlook is email.

But why should they care how they access the web. If they think that IE is the internet, then how is tricking them into loading another browser going to help them?

The browser choice system is designed to help the other browser makers like Mozilla and Opera. It is designed to help the website designers who bitch about CSS support in IE. It is not designed to help the people who actually own the computers that are being forced to re-choose their software.

The thing that everyone has forgotten here is what is best for the general public - the ones who aren't interested in tinkering with their computer and who just want to get onto the web. They don't care that there are other options out there, because they just want to use what they already know. They don't care if writing a website for IE is more work for the webmasters, because they don't see any of that and all they know is that all the websites that they want just work.

Re:informed decisions?

[Blakey Rat]

Each browser provided their own copy and link URLs. So if, for example, Mozilla's is sub-standard, they only have themselves to blame.

Re:informed decisions?

[martin-boundary]

It is not designed to help the people who actually own the computers that are being forced to re-choose their software.

It actually does help them, because their own stupidity will be limited by the capabilities of the browser they choose. So if you gave them IE by default, the most clueless users would catch every IE/Windows related malware. But if they have Mozilla or Opera, then they'll be immune to IE malware, and since Mozilla and Opera have a smaller marketshare, they'll be exposed to statistically fewer attacks.

Sometimes, users must be saved from themselves, and this ballot screen is a good start.

Re:informed decisions?

[shutdown -p now]

The thing that everyone has forgotten here is what is best for the general public - the ones who aren't interested in tinkering with their computer and who just want to get onto the web. They don't care that there are other options out there, because they just want to use what they already know.

"What is best for the general public" is a very subjective goal, anyway. One could argue that, in long-term, awareness that one can even choose a browser (or, in more extreme cases, awareness of what a "browser" even is, as a class of applications) is more beneficial for the society as a whole than just "using what they already know".

You know, teach the man to fish, and all that.

Re:informed decisions?

[CAIMLAS]

Welcome to the human race. Most peoples' important life decisions are made emotionally, on a whim, or on a bet. Failing that, they ask a friend what they should do. Very few people think deeply about their situation, and even fewer confer any serious research (beyond the shlock pushed out by news agencies and the government) on all that many topics.

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

It actually does help them, because their own stupidity will be limited by the capabilities of the browser they choose. So if you gave them IE by default, the most clueless users would catch every IE/Windows related malware.

Yeah, but they will still want to run Flash, which is the biggest security problem in Windows these days. IE 8 is much better for security than previous versions, especially when running in protected mode. It is not a sure thing than someone running IE will get infected (not like it used to be).

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

One could argue that, in long-term, awareness that one can even choose a browser (or, in more extreme cases, awareness of what a "browser" even is, as a class of applications) is more beneficial for the society as a whole than just "using what they already know".

Feel free to make that argument. I would be interested in what the benefits are. But I maintain that people just want to use their computer as an appliance to get the job done. They don't care about the subtle differences between software, anymore than they would care about whether they used NTFS or ext4 for their file system. People like us might care, but other people have other priorities.

If they need to know about this stuff, then we developers have not done our job properly.

Re:informed decisions?

[techno-vampire]

Sorry if that didn't provide any substance to yet another "evil MS" conspiracy theory...

No, but you must admit it was an obvious possibility under the circumstances.

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

because IE is absolutely positively terrible.It has no redeeming qualities a home user would use.

Well it gets on to the web, is generally fast enough and surfs around without crashing. Surely that is what most people want. If IE were that terrible then we wouldn't need a browser choice system forced on us - people would be actively finding the alternatives themselves, just like your 60 woman.

Re:informed decisions?

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft just got slapped by a really huge fine in EU. What was it, 3+ billion euro? That isn't pocket change even for a company of that size.

It's also being watched very, very closely, lest it makes another wrong move. Under the circumstances, the last thing you should expect is any sort of deliberate mucking with the very thing, the existence of which was the condition for the settlement.

Re:informed decisions?

[Jedi Alec]

Welcome to the human race. Most peoples' important life decisions are made emotionally, on a whim, or on a bet.

Hah, if only they'd restrict it to their lives. Yay for executives basing multi-million dollar/euro/currency of choice strategic corporate decisions on what their gut tells them or what is convenient for some buddy somewhere.

Re:informed decisions?

[BikeHelmet]

re-choose their software.

They aren't re-choosing anything.

The thing that everyone has forgotten here is what is best for the general public

What's best for the general public is using more exploit resistant browsers - and now they have a chance.

I'd love a prompt like that. How long until our government(s) get a clue and mandate it as well?

Re:informed decisions?

[10101001 10101001]

The thing that everyone has forgotten here is what is best for the general public - the ones who aren't interested in tinkering with their computer and who just want to get onto the web.

Tip #1: Don't use a computer. Computers are Linear Bound Automatons, which grant them far too much computational power to be considerable to a no-fuss appliance.

Tip #2: Don't use IE. Even if IE is more secure on average, it's still a larger target because of market share. Hence, there's more fuss with using IE.

Tip #3: Don't use Windows. See the note about IE market share and fuss.

Tip #4: Don't use the web. The web is inherently full of things to fuss over. Yes, this rather goes against the point about what the general public wants, but obviously the general public in choosing a computer is already making bad choices; if we're thinking of "what is best", we really have to throw out the general public's stated wants and get back to their underlying desires. So, more mail shipments of journals, magazines, and videos. Also, more phone use would be wise.

Re:informed decisions?

[hairyfeet]

You want to know the trick to getting folks like that to switch? as a PC repairman I've had great luck getting folks off of IE. The trick is to NOT talk about things like security, which they won't understand anyway, but to give them a carrot. For example my 67 year old Luddite father was a lifelong IE user, but after I gave him FF with ABP and (this is the REALLY important part) ForecastFox set to his zip code he will call me when over at a relative's house and say "This blue E thing is awful! How do I give them that Fox thingy again?".

It is actually really easy. Find out what they do with their browser, give them a couple of easy to use carrots like ForecastFox, and all is golden. for another example my dear mom who just turned 68 today (Hi Mom!) swore up and down she would never give up IE and Outlook Express, which is what she used at work since the days of Win95. After seeing that she still uses her ISPs email I set up SeaMonkey for her and showed her how she could check her mail in a single click and how it would pop up when she got a new email. Now she refuses to touch a PC that doesn't have "the blue bird" on it. I have converted young and old, business folks and homemakers. Make them feel they are getting better and easier than what they had and they will gladly drop IE and never touch it again.

Oh and if you need an easy peasy way to switch folks from a distance? say hello to your new best friend Ninite. After showing my GF who lives 2 hours away how easy it was to use Ninite to give her sis Firefox she happily went around using Ninite to give all her friends and family Firefox and showed them how to use the site. Now I am getting little questions from them about their "great new software" like Open Office, IMGBurn, and Songbird. with Ninite all they have to do is check the box besides the ones they want and click "get installer" which they run. That's it! And NO toolbars on apps like CCleaner or Java either, so no "uncheck the third box on the fourth page" BS. I hope this helps get your GF's mother away from IE!

Re:informed decisions?

[trickyD1ck]

is there any way to measure how many of these downloads were due to users making an informed choice

Hate to break it to you, but users don't care. And neither should you.

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

According to parent, we should all be forgetting about all the other browsers and just go with IE, because it's there and people don't care.

Really? Where did I say that? Where did I advocate what browser everyone should use? You are attempting to put words in my mouth (or on my keyboard).

All I did was describe what the general public currently want to do. They want to sit down at their computer and just jump on the web. They simply don't care what the program is. However, they will care if the user interface changes and things don't work as they used to because a court mandated Window Update changed it on them (they will forget they had to click through a browser choice window).

Except, of course, that we all still remember how much IE kept the Web back when it was the de facto standard. Just the same way that Windos has kept computing in the stone age. Maybe people don't care about the browser, but they do care about the detrimental effects of monopoly products, even if they don't understand what is happening why.

Why don't you go out and quiz the average Joe Public about this. Ask them how IE kept the Web back. Or how Windows has kept computing in the stone age. Ask them what they currently cannot do because they run Windows. Ask them that if they care about the detrimental effects of monopoly products, why did they still choose Microsoft Windows? It would be fascinating to find out what the answer is.

Re:informed decisions?

[FireFury03]

The thing that everyone has forgotten here is what is best for the general public - the ones who aren't interested in tinkering with their computer and who just want to get onto the web.

What's best for the general public, and what the general public are interested in are rarely related. The general public will usually take the path of least resistance, which frequently doesn't serve their long term interests. Causing short term inconvenience may indeed be good for the general public in the long term. We've already seen what happens when Microsoft gains an unopposed monopoly - IE6 caused the web to stagnate for *years* because they had destroyed the competition and so there was no longer anyone pushing MS into doing any further development work on it. We are only just starting to get out of that stagnation now, primarily because other browser vendors appeared and took advantage of MS's lack of improvements, but the alternative browsers had a really tough job getting any traction against the IE monopoly.

A healthy market with plenty of competition is frequently an inconvenience for the general public, but it is undeniably better than a monopoly in the long term.

Re:informed decisions?

[trifish]

and also having no intention to use Windows 7 any time in the near future

The browser ballot is presented to Windows XP and Vista users as well (via auto-update).

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

What's best for the general public is using more exploit resistant browsers - and now they have a chance.

They had a chance before. Just like the rest of us, there is nothing to stop them from downloading as many browsers as they want.

I'd love a prompt like that. How long until our government(s) get a clue and mandate it as well?

Why do you need a prompt before you are able to load another browser? If what other people say here is true, there is still a bit of IE left on your computer even if you select one of the other options. The prompt really doesn't change much from what we can already do now.

Re:informed decisions?

[Bert64]

A dominant market share for any single application in a given field is extremely bad for everyone but the developer of that application...
End users may not know or understand the details, but most of them would care if they did.

The dominance of windows and ie has been extremely detrimental to the industry as a whole, ie was pretty much left to rot once it had achieved a dominant market share which effectively stagnated the web for many years and severely harmed anyone trying to use any other platform for web browsing.
The monoculture also paved the way for much more effective and widespread hacking attacks. Regardless of the relative security of other browsers, trying to hit multiple targets at the same time is much harder.
The stagnation in the core browser allowed third party plugins like flash to become widespread because they provided some innovation while the browser stood still, and now we have another dangerous monoculture for hackers to exploit.

Re:informed decisions?

[Bert64]

Unfortunately, users need to have a level of technical knowledge to manage a machine connected to the internet...
They need to worry about updates, firewalls, antivirus etc...

Windows simply isn't ready for desktop users, neither are linux or mac (although they are actually closer in this regard). End users really need a simple appliance that they have little or no control over (and thus cannot break) such as an iphone or wii... Or alternatively, a full blown computer that's managed by someone else who is sufficiently qualified to do so (wasn't there a slashdot story recently about a linux offering like this?).

Another alternative, is to license computer use like driving - you need a license to do it, and in order to get a license you have to pass a test showing you have a basic competency with the machine you're operating. Unfortunately, this would probably do more harm than good because ms would undoubtedly hijack the process and turn it into propaganda rather than any real education.

Re:informed decisions?

[Bert64]

People have to know that alternatives exist, many don't...
People who do know that alternatives exist, need to know they're sufficiently better to be worth learning - remember people are lazy and will stick with something inferior out of laziness.

Re:informed decisions?

[Bert64]

The average joe public doesn't have the answers to those questions...
They typically didn't choose windows, it came with the computer they bought and was either the only option, or the only other option was a mac which cost a lot more.
However, most members of the public do care about monopolies that they are aware of (eg utilities)...
You will find that if you explain the situation to the average member of the public in language they understand, that they will care even if they don't feel they can do anything about it.

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

We've already seen what happens when Microsoft gains an unopposed monopoly - IE6 caused the web to stagnate for *years* because they had destroyed the competition and so there was no longer anyone pushing MS into doing any further development work on it.

First of all, they don't have a monopoly anymore, so why bother doing this now. And they were certainly never unopposed.

But how did they cause the web to stagnate? Sure they didn't support PNG format properly until way too late, but really what makes the web so much better now than it was when Netscape threw in the towel and decided to rewrite their browser from scratch? We had CSS back then. In fact CSS 3 started in 1998 and it still isn't finalised - now that's criminal!

We already had Flash, Java and Javascript. The main thing that makes the web so much "better" than it was in 1998 was AJAX. And that was first developed by Microsoft.

I think the real problem for the web over the last decade was the W3C. HTML kept improving while the browser manufacturers kept adding features and W3C adopted what they liked. But now the emphasis is on the browsers strictly implementing the standard, the standards have just stopped moving. The successor to HTML 4 was XHTML, which was technical fiddling around the edges rather than adding something for the end user. Eventually we are going to get HTML 5, which will definitely add something to benefit the surfers. But it took WHATWG to get the ball rolling on that. "Now there's your problem!"

Re:informed decisions?

[rwiggers]

This leads me to ask who wrote the descriptions of the various browsers.

It's something that is trivial to find out on your own. Here is the ballot page. If you click on "Tell me more" buttons, you'll see that all links lead to web pages hosted on a domain owned the company behind the browser (mozilla.com, apple.com, opera.com, google.com etc).

Sorry if that didn't provide any substance to yet another "evil MS" conspiracy theory...

I read it not as "yet another "evil MS" conspiracy theory", but as "yet another bashing on poor marketing from other companies than microsoft. (Granted apple has superb marketing as well, but that's not a target market).

Re:informed decisions?

[houghi]

People who do not care can select IE. That is part of the great things about choice. You can choose whatever you like, even IE. And if they really don't care, then selecting something else would not matter, because they don't care.

Re:informed decisions?

[FireFury03]

First of all, they don't have a monopoly anymore, so why bother doing this now

The EU has certainly waited until far too late - this step should have been taken 10 years ago. However, I do support what they are doing simply because it will prevent history from repeating itself.

Sure they didn't support PNG format properly until way too late, but really what makes the web so much better now than it was when Netscape threw in the towel and decided to rewrite their browser from scratch? We had CSS back then.

Yes, we had more or less the same standards back then, the difference is that IE's support for them was criminally broken. Getting anything reasonably advanced to work the way you wanted it to on IE was *really* hard. Getting stuff to work on both IE and any other browser was even harder - this means that the web never really advanced much, and where it did it only ended up working on IE, which was a serious problem for those of us who didn't have Windows machines.

I think the real problem for the web over the last decade was the W3C. HTML kept improving while the browser manufacturers kept adding features and W3C adopted what they liked.

You *need* standards, otherwise you go back to a situation where the platforms have diverged and only the majority platform is supported. Back in the days where IE had the monopoly, all the other browsers were basically playing catch-up - not because they were technologically behind IE, but because it is really hard to support an ad-hoc "standard" that is barely documented and only implemented on one platform. I want the browser writers to spend their time implementing improvements to functionality, not tweaking existing functionality so that it matches the bugs in another browser.

The successor to HTML 4 was XHTML, which was technical fiddling around the edges rather than adding something for the end user. Eventually we are going to get HTML 5

HTML 5 is a terrible design. XHTML introduced some real improvements over HTML 4.01, but a small number of vendors (Microsoft, Nokia, etc.) decided to raise two fingers at the W3C and implement their own badly designed standard instead (HTML 5). A standard which completely throws away all those improvements and introduces a bunch of badly thought out elements which are going to require frequent redesigns of the language to support future technologies (XHTML was going down the genericised path whereby future technologies would frequently not require language changes, which is a far saner idea).

Sure, HTML 5 introduces some features that XHTML hadn't got around to implementing, but it would've been far more sensible and reasonably trivial to extend XHTML in a generic way in order to implement those features.

Re:informed decisions?

[mikechant]

First of all, they don't have a monopoly anymore, so why bother doing this now.

Ho hum. Yet another person who doesn't understand (or, quite often, doesn't *want* to understand) the *legal* definition of 'monopoly'.

It's not about 100% of the market. It's not about having no competition.

It's whether you have a dominant position, capable of distorting free competition. You can have 30% of a market and still fall under monopoly-related competition laws, e.g if you and two other companies with 30% erect barriers to new entrants.

In MS's case they have about 90% of the PC OS market and are legally a monopoly under competition laws in most major markets, and so are potentially restrained from certain types of behaviour, in this particular case using their PC OS monopoly to increase their browser market share.

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

But the point is that the people who don't care are the ones who just wildly click on anything to make the dialog box go away and then complain that their computer is acting funny. I have no doubt that there will be some people who will call in a techie to remove a virus because their user interface has changed. This will not help those people.

The people who do care already had the option of installing another browser. We know this because we can see the increasing market share of the other browsers. This will not help those people either.

If people really wanted choice then Linux would have a greater market share than it does now.

Re:informed decisions?

[drinkypoo]

Getting rid of IE is good for everyone. Most people use Windows and just browsing a site with IE has infected many computers. You could extend this argument to Microsoft, but I think the case for eliminating IE is pretty much open and shut.

Re:informed decisions?

[Gadget_Guy]

The EU has certainly waited until far too late - this step should have been taken 10 years ago. However, I do support what they are doing simply because it will prevent history from repeating itself.

Won't happen, not in IE's favour anyway. 10 years ago Netscape 4 was crap compared to IE, and then they stopped development to rewrite it from scratch. This time, there are a number of different options around that one browser disappearing will not be so dramatic.

You *need* standards, otherwise you go back to a situation where the platforms have diverged and only the majority platform is supported

I agree that you need standards. I was saying that W3C has never been great at leading the standards. Way too often they were reacting to the extensions that the browsers came up with For example, Netscape's Javascript and tables. Also Microsoft's iframes and various DOM stuff. Fortunately they ignored Netscape's layers and <blink>other crap!</blink>

HTML 5 is a terrible design. XHTML introduced some real improvements over HTML 4.01, but a small number of vendors (Microsoft, Nokia, etc.) decided to raise two fingers at the W3C and implement their own badly designed standard instead (HTML 5).

I am not a great fan of HTML 5, but at least they are adding features that will be seen by the punters. Also, Microsoft and Nokia had nothing to do with HTML 5. According to the WHATWG FAQ it was started "by individuals of Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software".

Finally, there is going to be an XHTML 5. I haven't look at it to know how useful it will be.

Re:informed decisions?

[Snowbat]

The EU has certainly waited until far too late - this step should have been taken 10 years ago.

Opera waited until December 2007 to file their complaint.

Re:informed decisions?

[Randle_Revar]

>possibly making MS provide a better option for updates rather than via an activex website.

Windows has had an application for updates for a long time now.

Re:informed decisions?

[jez9999]

Not being from Europe, and also having no intention to use Windows 7 any time in the near future, I haven't seen this "choice screen" until I just searched for a screen shot of it

This appears to be it (or a facsimile). My question is, if it's just a remote webpage, why on earth aren't they doing the shuffling server-side? It's a very cheap operation and they're relying on client script to do it?

Re:informed decisions?

[hkmwbz]

If they think that IE is the internet, then how is tricking them into loading another browser going to help them?

Why are they being "tricked" if they are given a visible choice, but not when tricked into believing that there is no choice (pre-ballot screen)? You seem rather biased.

The browser choice system is designed to help the other browser makers like Mozilla and Opera. It is designed to help the website designers who bitch about CSS support in IE. It is not designed to help the people who actually own the computers that are being forced to re-choose their software.

Why yes, it is indeed. It gives them clearly visible choice most never knew they had. This hopefully reduces IE's dominance, leading to a more diverse browser market, and there are many reasons why that benefits users. For example, multiple browsers with a decent market share means that it's much more expensive and time-consuming to create malware. It will take much more effort to cover even a small part of the computers out there compared to how it was before.

The thing that everyone has forgotten here is what is best for the general public - the ones who aren't interested in tinkering with their computer and who just want to get onto the web. They don't care that there are other options out there, because they just want to use what they already know. They don't care if writing a website for IE is more work for the webmasters, because they don't see any of that and all they know is that all the websites that they want just work.

No, you are just assuming that everyone has forgotten this and that. As a matter of fact, choice is good for the end-user. Another example of why is that sites will be easier to maintain, which means better quality and service for the end-user.

But a Microsoft shill wouldn't care about that, I guess...

Re:informed decisions?

[BikeHelmet]

They had a chance before. Just like the rest of us, there is nothing to stop them from downloading as many browsers as they want.

Except lack of knowledge.

I have a chance to cure all my own illnesses too, but I tend to depend on more educated healthcare professionals.

Why do you need a prompt before you are able to load another browser? If what other people say here is true, there is still a bit of IE left on your computer even if you select one of the other options. The prompt really doesn't change much from what we can already do now.

1) I don't need a prompt. I'd still love it to be there.

2) That can be fixed with a bit of nLiting, but it would be foolish to do so when so much is rendered by the trident engine.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is not ad supported anymore. It does seem to render some pages wrong though. From my understanding it is the pages fault and not Operas.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Alien1024]

Opera on desktops has been free (as in beer) and ad-free for a long, long time, and the fastest browser until Chrome came along.

How is this news?

[Jorl17]

We all knew it would happen. If you know that X leads to Y and you also know that you will be doing X in Z time, then you know that, in said Z time, Y will happen.

X Y Z Means eXtreme eYebally microZoft, of course.

Seriously, though, this was really expected. It's not that people actually like the browsers in such cases, but they just randomly click. I've had my grandfather randomly picking Firefox already; I've had my grandmother clicking an add that says "You are visitor 1M, you win a big prize!". It's the fact that many people are still "ignorant" or careless towards this question.

The dialog pops-up: "CHOOSE THY BROWSER".
Reaction: "What the hell is a browser? Choose? I just want to 'surf' the 'internet'. Hell, this one with the shiny colors and the fancy name should be good, I'll click it. [double-clicks instead of single-clicking]."

All in all, I'm glad that people are being given the choice. But, really, those of us who care about it, already had the means to do it; it's the fact that we're fucking upset that other people don't get pulled into using them...
Jorl has spoken. Now mod up/down/sideways.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

The dialog pops-up: "CHOOSE THY BROWSER".
Reaction: "What the hell is a browser? Choose? I just want to 'surf' the 'internet'. Hell, this one with the shiny colors and the fancy name should be good, I'll click it. [double-clicks instead of single-clicking]."

Funny that you say this. Even as informed techies we are humans still reacting this exact in daily life. The way our procedural minds handle a completely uninformed choice process is what sets us appart from Joe Sixpack.

I had an itch and bought a random Gundam game without any prior review or series info other than having watched a 10 year old part of their universe (Gundam Wing.) That put me in a real-life position of having a desire, like "I just want to '[shoot mechs and have fun on my 3D console.]' I was met with surprise when I first ran the game... they just said "CHOOSE THY [CHARACTER]" and gave me 5 or 6 different pilots, so you see the parallel with giving someone browsers they have no idea about.

I made a random guess based on looks the first time around. I can see that people feel this exact way when presented a browser screen on a new PC. I would later end checking on wikipedia and realizing that Gundam has so many characters and YEARLY new installments of their universe, that a newbie would have little chance of knowing the backstory and playing with the one guy they like most first. What my geek self did is play a few sessions with each character, feel their weaknesses, strengths, backstory and mech's cool factor, and then try the others more or less systematically.

An average person in this situation (where it not a game you'll play through with a choice to make a change of choice) is just going to pick one and stick to it unless the experience is really bad. So, let me ask you this... is there a way to "try" before you keep on this whole ballot screen business? It sounds like a "set it and forget it" thing from the news we've read so far.

Re:How is this news?

[kiddygrinder]

it actually explains what a browser is and does not actually uninstall ie, it just removes it from the shortcuts bar. to be honest i don't see the down side, user clicks a blatantly obvious browser picker screen to choose their browser, which includes the friendly old ie "e for internet" logo, and microsoft get's one less place to abuse their monopoly.

Re:How is this news?

[RealGrouchy]

Reaction: "What the hell is a browser? Choose? I just want to 'surf' the 'internet'...

"...I think I'll listen to some Opera while I wait for my TaB."

- RG>

Re:How is this news?

[BikeHelmet]

All in all, I'm glad that people are being given the choice. But, really, those of us who care about it, already had the means to do it; it's the fact that we're fucking upset that other people don't get pulled into using them...

Reaction: "What the hell is a browser? Choose? I just want to 'surf' the 'internet'.

Not everyone has tech-savvy friends educating them on how to "surf the internet" safely. Now they have a x/5 chance of getting a secure browser, where X is between 0 and 4. Now rather than having a default homepage that goes to some crappy news site pulling in ads from adservers, they have a chance their default homepage will be google.

It's an improvement, mate.

Re:How is this news?

[L4t3r4lu5]

it actually explains what a browser is and does...

It does? I'm looking at the page right now and all I can see is 7 variations of "This browser is fast and pretty" and Apple claiming Safari is the most innovative (it's not), Opera claiming that Opera Turbo "speeds up your internet connection" (it doesn't), and GreenBrowser saying it's f*cking green!

What use is that?!

Re:How is this news?

[kiddygrinder]

that's the second screen, the first can be seen here: European Internet Explorer users to get 'Browser Choice' screen from Windows Update

Opera download numbers

[tronicum]

Opera also released its version 10.5. Their increase in downloads might not be only the result off being linked by the Broswerchoice Site, but people upgrading their browsers.

Re:Opera download numbers

[shutdown -p now]

Presumably they can track where the users come from via referer HTTP header.

Re:Opera download numbers

[aylons]

Pay attention: they said that the download rate increased 3x compared to other main releases.

Overreach.

[cosm]

I am aware Microsoft has been a little overreaching with their software practices in the past, but damn if it isn't contributing to the combined lack of intelligence of the computer illiterate populace when organizations like the EU force things like this on Microsoft.

EU: "Hey Microsoft, people are too ignorant to do research and realize there exist alternatives to IE"
M$: "So what."
EU: "Give them the option to use third party software options other than the installed feature built into your OS, or else pay up!"
M$: "Ok, we'll buckle, we don't need any more bad press waxing possible monopolist practices."

What if I started a class action suit against Apple because Itunes is installed by default, and that is a "monopoly" on digital music storefronts? Would Apple have to install a Media Player Choice(TM) screen, allowing customers to choose Windows Media Player for OSX, RealPlayer, or WinAmp because they are too ignorant to do the research themselves? Yes Microsoft is huge. Yes they are the main provider of consumer level OS's to the big-box retailers. So let them package and run by default the software of their choosing. People don't have to buy M$. This would be like forcing a leading car manufacturer to offer brakes from 3rd party companies, because the buyers are complacent enough to accept their shitty factory brakes, but litigation hungry enough to file complaints about them.

What the fuck is society coming to.

Re:Overreach.

[Jorl17]

Exactly my point! That's what I mean with the end of my post here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1575530&cid=31407998 .

Re:Overreach.

[gzipped_tar]

Your post is modded down. You should have used "iChoice" rather than "Media Player Choice(TM)".

Re:Overreach.

[cosm]

I guess I didn't wax eloquent enough about Apple for the iSlashvertisement team.

Re:Overreach.

[CannonballHead]

Dude, get your grammar right, it'd have to be iChoose not iChoice...

Re:Overreach.

[hedwards]

Just be happy they aren't still doing that iAnalProbe promotion. 1 iAnalProbe with the purchase of any copy of Windows 7.

Re:Overreach.

[cosm]

Is my tinfoil hat that shiny?

Re:Overreach.

[Anonymous Coward]

"People don't have to buy M$"

Yes they do. Oh, certainly there are individuals who can choose not to. On slashdot they're probably the majority. But the general population? If they want a computer, they go to a computer store, where they're offered a choice between Vista and Windows 7, if they're lucky. They might realize that a mac is an alternative, but they'll quickly find out that they have hundreds of dollars of software that won't run on it. They might realize that Linux is an alternative, but finding a place that sells a computer without Windows (or OSX) on it is very difficult for the non-technically-inclined, especially once they realize it'll cost at least as much as the version with Windows. They teach MS office in public schools, and then there are all the businesses that are locked into windows by custom applications that won't run without Windows.

Apple has nowhere near the monopoly that MS does, and they haven't tried to leverage it to nearly the same extent.

Re:Overreach.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am aware Microsoft has been a little overreaching with their software practices in the past

Congratulations, sir, for winning the understatement of the day award.

They barely got off in 1991, thanks to a deadlocked panel. They settled with the DOJ in 1994 to end their investigation into abusive monopoly practices, and then they breached that settlement, prompting the trial in 1998 involving 20+ states and the US Department of Justice.

In that trial, witnesses intentionally failed to answer questions, claimed not to recall, and provided answers directly contrary to the documentary evidence. Microsoft submitted falsified video evidence and edited demonstrations regarding the operation of its software and the process involved in switching to that of competitors.

They were convicted of abusive practices, a finding not overturned on appeal.

Similar EU proceedings produced the ballot screen, also a minor slap on the wrist.

What if I started a class action suit against Apple because Itunes is installed by default, and that is a "monopoly" on digital music storefronts?

It's not. It's a dominant player, but it's not a monopoly, and even if it were, it has not engaged in unlawful leveraging of that power.

Microsoft's IE trouble isn't because it's included with Windows--it's because they launched IE as a separate product and then violated their DOJ agreement when they started integrating into Windows. It took seven years of legal action to get them to un-integrate it.

Had they complied with their original obligations and kept the products separate while allowing OEMs to bundle other browsers without being penalized, they wouldn't be in this situation and no one would care that MSIE is the default browser on MS Windows.

Yes they are the main provider of consumer level OS's to the big-box retailers. So let them package and run by default the software of their choosing. People don't have to buy M$

Contradiction of points. The difficulty of avoiding Microsoft and their misconduct in prior settlements is the major reason they face this penalty.

This would be like forcing a leading car manufacturer to offer brakes from 3rd party companies, because the buyers are complacent enough to accept their shitty factory brakes, but litigation hungry enough to file complaints about them.

Ah, the inept car analogy. Now I know I'm just feeding the trolls.

1. No leading car manufacturer uses first-party brakes.
2. Brakes are an integral component of a car; IE was a separate product that Microsoft decided to weave into Windows specifically to quash competing products, using their captive monopoly audience (both OEMs and customers) to do so.
3. MS is not being punished for its selection of a shitty browser, but for its repeated breach of legally-binding settlements requiring that they not bundle any additional products with Windows. Trying to tie the IE codebase into the OS was an attempt to dodge that bullet by calling IE a "feature" and not a product.
4. Unless that car company was using its cars in order to squeeze out other brake manufacturers, and made it such that installing third party brakes meant adding an extension onto the axles, with the MS brakes still mounted to the wheel, and then forcing all of its dealers and licensed maintenance shops to use MS brakes and not offer any others for aftermarket installation, it would not be engaging in similar conduct.
5. Even if the car company did engage in that conduct, if it complied with the original penalty (no mandatory bundling), it would still more than likely be permitted to install its brakes as the default choice.

Re:Overreach.

[LordLucless]

There isn't a problem with being a monopoly. There is a problem with abusing a monopoly. Monopolies are dangerous things in a market economy. Ideally, they shouldn't exist. If you are have a monopoly, there are some legal restrictions on things you can do with it. One of the things which is illegal is using your monopoly presence to squeeze competitors out of adjacent markets. Microsoft did this with Netscape. They used their desktop OS monopoly to squeeze Netscape out of the browser monopoly. This was illegal; they are now being punished.

Your car analogy is even worse than such things usually are. This isn't about "market leaders". This is about "monopolies". Windows is a monopoly. Mac OSX isn't a competitor - a Mac is a piece of hardware. If you want an OS for your commodity x86 hardware, you can't go buy OSX. Brakes are also not a good example, as they are an integral part of a car, and always have been. Back when the browser bundling occurred, browsers were "aftermarket" components of operating systems.

A more apt analogy would be if Holden was the only manufacturer of cars. There exists a market for car MP3 players. Holden starts manufacturing their own MP3 players, installs them in all their cars, and bakes the cost of them into the price of the car. All the third party MP3 players then go out of business, because the only cars people can buy all come with MP3 players. Holden now has an additional monopoly in car MP3 players, not because they have a best-of-breed product, but because they leveraged their existing monopoly. It would be entirely appropriate to force Holden to make MP3 players optional extras, and restore the market.

Note this doesn't apply if Holden is "the largest car manufacturer"; it applies if they are "the only car manufacturer".

Re:Overreach.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What if I started a class action suit against Apple because Itunes is installed by default, and that is a "monopoly" on digital music storefronts?

You have your cart and horse backwards. First, iTunes the application is not a monopoly of any sort. OS X is not a monopoly of any sort. That leaves iTunes the service, which as a lot of market share in the US. That means Apple can't bundle OS X with that service, but they don't they bundle the application with the OS and tie the service to the application.

If Apple required OS X to use iTunes, you'd have a case. If Apple forced people to buy a copy of OS X to buy a song on iTunes, you'd have a case. In fact though, Apple is moving iTunes to a Web interface to remove the tie with the application as they approach monopoly levels of market share... Which is probably the best you could hope for from any lawsuit regarding it. Apple can't leverage OS X's monopoly influence to promote iTunes because OS has no monopoly influence. Apple isn't leveraging iTunes service monopoly to promote anything in particular.

What the fuck is society coming to.

It is now and always has been a clamoring crowd of ignorance. People who insist on expressing their uneducated opinions without bothering to understand the topic even superficially first.

Re:Overreach.

[onenil]

I had this exact conversation just one week ago, with a friend who was playing devil's advocate - the answer to your questions (specifically on iTunes) is that iTunes performs specific functionality.

What Microsoft did with their web browser is effectively force out the competition with anti-competitive behaviour. They took marketshare from Netscape by imposing Internet Explorer on users of their OS.

Monopolies are allowed in a capatilist society - they are required, however, to not ABUSE their monopoly status. Microsoft did this, as an effective monopoly on the OS market, they abused their position in that market by forcing everyone via various mechanisms to use their web browser (the broswer market is not the same as the OS market).

Apple have what could be called a monopoly on media players with iPods and iPhones, but they do not abuse this monopoly by forcing you to use something else in a different market. iTunes facilitates core functionality for the market in which they operate / have a monopoly in.

To apply it to your car analogy: Microsoft put a standard stereo system into their car (which in itself, is OK), but they also didn't allow you to remove their standard stereo unit in favour of another one. Furthermore, even if you as the consumer installed an additional third party unit - and installed it in front of the standard unit, every now and then you would be forced to use the standard unit anyway, because that's just how they wired it up behind the scenes.

The fact that they're a monopoly is not the problem in the eyes of the law, it's the fact that they abused their monpoly in one market to dominate another. The EU is now attempting to remedy this.

Re:Overreach.

[cosm]

"If you want an OS for your commodity x86 hardware, you can't go buy OSX"
-And that failing by Apple to open up to independent builders will keep Microsoft happily on top.

" Brakes are also not a good example, as they are an integral part of a car, and always have been."
-To the average consumer, brakes are as important to the car as the browser is as important to the OS. How else would they access Facebook?

And to your Holden argument, well, you are suggesting that because a manufacturer is the 'only' one in the playing field, they have to accommodate other companies in on their revenue stream because its 'unfair' to default to their built-in features.

The more market intervention by governments, the less incentive there is for folks to create and sell (or even distribute) better operating systems. If Microsoft is continually nitpicked to make all these 3rd party company's happy, in effect making consumers-rights groups happy, to the point that everybody is just 'satisfied' with Windows, why even try making a better operating system? Why even bother developing Linux, if everytime Microsoft makes a sale they have to accomodate choice. The more choice that is litigated into the operating system, the less incentive there will be to choose a different operating systems in the first place, cascading into less developer drive to even work on other operating systems.

Re:Overreach.

[devent]

That's really BS. The same will happen to Apple, if they have 90% of the market and forcing everyone to use Safari. There is nothing wrong with have a monopoly, but if you are abusing it like MS did and do than this browser choice windows is the least thing the government should MS force to do.

What the government really should do is to split MS apart, make the whole OEM deals transparent to the customers and force MS to use open standards (or force MS to open up theirs).

Re:Overreach.

[randallman]

A little? They've used their monopoly to dominate the browser, office software and corporate email. They go out of their way to avoid interoperability with their protocols and file formats and use vertical integration in addition to lock users into the Microsoft world of software. They have a history of unethical practices and continue today (OOXML, Linux patent threats). Many of their offerings have superior alternatives, but fitting them in with Microsoft's closed ecosystem is too difficult so people just do the easy thing and buy they stuff that works with their Active Directory, Exchange and Desktops.

In the browser market, Microsoft has clearly shown abuse of their Desktop monopoly with their lack of standards compliance and proprietary extensions. Tell me why MS can't build a standards compliant browser with their resources. Even today, they're trying to push Siverlight to hold the keys to the web's multimedia and with MS holding patents, there will always be a cloud over compatible implementations like Mono. And don't say they won't play that card. They already did it with their Linux patent threats. They've been anti-competitive with I.E. They deserve this.

Re:Overreach.

[cosm]

So because something may not be integral, it is a requirement that it be made explicitly optional? And to play devil's advocate, if agreeing with your argument that the browser is not an integral part of the OS, if Ford was the only manufacturer of automobiles, would you suggest litigating Ford into offering different sun-visors from different manufacturers? Hell, what if Ford decided to use tires that were required at $5000 dollars extra per tire? You either buy a car or you don't. Eventually somebody else will come along and make another one, and if its a superior product, people will switch to it. But along your logic, if they are forced to offer a tire/sun-visor choice, then why would anybody bother creating and selling another car, if the market leader will be forced by law to 'do the right thing', removing incentive to create new car companies, and removing the incentive for people to consider switching.

Owning a computer is not a constitutionally derived right, it is a decision-purchase, and as with automobiles, is up to the manufacturers what and what they don't package with their products. Its the FREE MARKET. The moment you intervene is the moment things slide down the slippery slope and destroy competition incentive.

Re:Overreach.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

No Apple can't leverage an OS monopoly but they certainly are starting to get there in the media player space.

Umm, the Windows Media Player has more than double the share if iTunes. How exactly does that constitute a monopoly?

My problem is I like the iPod but have a strong aversion to iTunes. It continues to be a pain to manage devices with.

So use something else. Seriously WMP, Amarok, Banshee, Floola, gtkpod, MediaMonkey, Rhythmbox,SharePod, Songbird, Winamp,YamiPod all have support for iPod integration. Why are you using iTunes if you don't like it?

Re:Overreach.

[CastrTroy]

In my highschool we all used WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Corel Draw/PhotoPaint, and FileMaker Pro. Does that mean nobody from my highschool is capable of using MS Word, Excel, Photoship, or Access? No it doesn't. Because in my day, they taught people how to use computers in general. How to look for stuff in the menus, and told us that we should read the help files if we got stuck. I guess there are quite a bit of people who can't operate a computer if something moves. But those kind of people would probably be screwed anyway. Look at the differences from Windows XP to Windows Vista/7. Look at all the changes in Office 2007. These people get lost every upgrade anyway. Switching to a whole new OS with a whole new suite of applications wouldn't be any more difficult on them. They forget things from day to day, even within the same application.

Re:Overreach.

[LordLucless]

To the average consumer, brakes are as important to the car as the browser is as important to the OS. How else would they access Facebook?

That might be the case now, fifteen years after they were first added, but at the time, no, they weren't. There was a nascent browser market, and MS attempted to kill it in it's infancy, and roll it into their OS monopoly.

And to your Holden argument, well, you are suggesting that because a manufacturer is the 'only' one in the playing field, they have to accommodate other companies in on their revenue stream because its 'unfair' to default to their built-in features.

In essence, yes. Monopolies are abberations in a free market. They sometimes exist, due to natural laws, or simply the extreme competency of a company, but they are problematic. The laws of a free market do not apply to monopolies - therefore they need external regulations to keep them under control. This is understood and accepted by pretty much every free market theorist from Adam Smith onwards. If this were not the case, monopolies could spread from industry to adjacent industry via lock-in until the free market is totally strangled.

The more market intervention by governments, the less incentive there is for folks to create and sell (or even distribute) better operating systems.

The story with browsers is an interesting one, because Microsoft's attempt at bundling was essentially defeated by Netscape committing seppuku. They released their browser for free. IE is not free, it's simply baked into the cost of Windows. Netscape couldn't do that because their browser was their only product. When Netscape died, their browser lived on to compete with IE, preventing the monopoly MS was trying to achieve. This is obviously not the usual outcome, as most industries have a greater than zero production cost per widget.

If this had not occurred, and MS had achieved its monopoly, what do you think would happen? Microsoft would have probably continued to drive web technology. As it refused to accept standards, ActiveX and other properietary MS technologies would have gained dominance. Via tighter integration with the browser, and proprietary protocols, MS would have been able to displace Apache with IIS. This would have allowed MS to lock-in serverside development. Java would have been shut out in favour of .NET, ASP would become the only options, rather than ASP/Perl/PHP/Rails like we have now. Every website would have to run on windows, in order to use ASP/.NET. How well do you think Google would have done, competing against MS while relying on their technology, and being required to have tens of thousands of Windows licenses for their massive clusters? How much traction do you think linux would have gained if it hadn't had a solid base of server-installs to grow from?

MS would have spread from having an OS monopoly to monopolies in browsers, http servers, development languages and server OSes. This is what anti-trust laws are designed to prevent - monopolies taking over the free market. In this particular case, thanks first to Netscape and later to open source software, this didn't happen. But in industries where your widgets cost money to produce individualls, instead of being able to be electronically replicated at negligible cost, this is not possible. Restraining monopolies protects free markets, it doesn't hinder them. Ideally, free markets shouldn't need protection, as in an ideal world, there would be no monopolies. We don't live in an ideal world, there are monopolies, and they need restraining.

Re:Overreach.

[Exception Duck]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2009/01/marketshare-2398402384.png

Re:Overreach.

[CastrTroy]

Can we at least get Apple to stop trying to shove safari down my throat every time I upgrade iTunes?

Re:Overreach.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Except that Windows (and IE) are not a monopoly.

Windows is a monopoly in some jurisdictions and a market dominant in others, depending upon what they call it in their antitrust/competition law. IE is not a monopoly.

Yes, but there are alternatives (for those who really care, there's Linux), for everyone else there's Apple.

Linux has negligible share and Apple is not in the same market. MS's customers are Dell and HP and Acer and they cannot license OS X. You clearly did not bother learning anything about this issue before spouting off.

Unless you can prove that MS forces stores to sell Mac's for more money (they don't, Apple gladly artificially inflates their prices on their own), then you can't claim that Windows is a monopoly.

Unless you can prove bananas are purple you can't say Windows is not a monopoly. Seriously, just because make up some nonsense that has nothing to do with the legal definitions involved doesn't mean it has anything to do with reality.

IE is also not a monopoly since you can download a different browser any time you choose.

Since the EU never claimed it was, all your comment does is demonstrate you don't understand the law, the purpose for the law, or the particulars of this case. Why then, should anyone care about your ignorant opinions? Why would I bother reading yet another poster regurgitating the same ignorant nonsense because they're too lazy to read and find out what the hell they're talking about?

Re:Overreach.

[introspekt.i]

Ludwig Von Mises, is that you?!?

Re:Overreach.

[lennier]

Except that Windows (and IE) are not a monopoly. Are they the largest player? Yes, but there are alternatives (for those who really care, there's Linux), for everyone else there's Apple.

For what software?

Remember, there now exist lots of essential line-of-business applications which simply do not have a non-Windows port.

'Run OSX' is not much of an answer if your factory runs CustomWidgetMaker0.3 written in Delphi, QuickBasic, DOS batch scripting and Excel macros.

Re:Overreach.

[TheLink]

> Does that mean nobody from my highschool is capable of using MS Word, Excel, Photoship, or Access? No it doesn't.
> they taught people how to use computers in general.
> How to look for stuff in the menus, and told us that we should read the help files if we got stuck

FWIW it took me a while to figure out that you had to click on the MS Office 2007 logo to do certain stuff, e.g. "save as" to save a document as a different file :).

Pressing F1 to help, doesn't help with that. Maybe my memory is bad/"nostalgic", but I think the previous microsoft office help was better.

Re:Overreach.

[jmac_the_man]

What if the thing they had the monopoly on was a hardware device of some sort, and they were using the hardware device to promote the use of iTunes?

Re:Overreach.

[Frinet]

You're right Apple doesn't use OS X to promote iTunes, but that's because they use their monopoly on the mp3 market instead. From what I understand, the iPod requires iTunes to be of any use at all, it doesn't allow music from other sources unless you put it through iTunes first. To me that's worse than simply bundling software with your product for which there are alternatives that the user can get easily.

Re:Overreach.

[JackieBrown]

They had to offer training to the managers at my job for Office 2007. The managers then handed out a how-to document to everyone else.

Most people I work with just assume that whatever option they used to use went away and leave it at that.

The funny thing is that they would all bitch and whine if we switched to openoffice and they could not find an option.

Re:Overreach.

[indiechild]

You can use other programs instead of iTunes to put music on your iPod. Do a Google search.

Re:Overreach.

[LordLucless]

Stop re-phrasing my statements inaccurately. I'm not making general statements, stop generalising them. If you are a monopoly, and you are competing in a market distinct from your monopoly, and you leverage the special properties of your monopoly to inhibit the competition in the second market, then you should be stopped.

What if Ford (assuming Ford were a monopoly) required stupidly expensive tires? Then, unless government intervened, all other tire manufacturers would go out of business (if Ford is the only car, and their tires "won't work" with Ford for whatever reason, then their product is useless) and Ford would have a monopoly on the tire business (or their supplier would).

Eventually somebody else will come along and make another one, and if its a superior product, people will switch to it.

No, somebody will make another one, Ford will cut prices so that the other product is priced out of the market and shuts down, then Ford will jack the prices back up again to recoup the losses they sustained while undercutting the newcomer. A newcomer to the market won't have the capitalization to run in the red for as long as an incumbent monopoly.

But along your logic, if they are forced to offer a tire/sun-visor choice, then why would anybody bother creating and selling another car?

Because there's more to a car than a sun visor and tires? Because they think they can make a more efficient/prettier/faster car than Ford? Because they think they can make cars cheaper than Ford can? Hell, because they think they can make cars exactly the same as Ford, and think the market will reward them for offering variety. They'll make cars for the same reason anyone's ever gone into business - because they think they can make money.

Owning a computer is not a constitutionally derived right

You know what else isn't a constitutionally derived right? Having a corporate charter. By that logic, we should just pull Microsoft's corporate charter - after all, if it's not in the constitution it's up for grabs, right?

Its the FREE MARKET

Not free for the consumer, who now has no choice. Not free for the competitor, who cannot compete, not due to the quality of their own product, but due to another company's control of the market.

the moment you intervene is the moment things slide down the slippery slope and destroy competition incentive.

There's no competition incentive anyway with an monopoly in your market. How can you kill that which is already dead?

Re:Overreach.

[diamondmagic]

What harm have monopolies actually ever done? They have dramatically lowered the price of commodity goods like steel and oil by making distribution more efficient, or failing that, collapsing out of irresponsibility. Name any such trust that hasn't imploded on itself within a decade. Regional monopolies such as telecoms exist because it's more efficient to wire yourself to someone who doesn't already have high-speed Internet than try and compete with someone who is already established - Anti-trust there would mean fewer, not more, people get their high-speed Internet. How about these software monopolies? Strictly speaking, there is no right to "intellectual property" (it exists only due to law), so if you are arguing for anti-trust regulations for Microsoft (who already has a monopoly on the distribution of certain products depending on their creative contents in the form of copyright, or on their ideas in the form of patents), you are arguing two wrongs make a right - It could be true, but very probably isn't, since you are focusing on the wrong issue entirely: don't impose regulations on them, take away their state-granted monopolies over their patents and copyrights.

Re:Overreach.

[TheLink]

Yes, MSO2007 has issues (I don't know why MS Word uses CPU even if supposed to be idling, and I've had trouble pasting ) and the UI change is "meh", but in my opinion Open Office is very significantly worse[1]. Perhaps the latest version is much better now, but after so many years of disappointment, it's hard to believe it has improved dramatically. I'll still use it if I have to, but it is far from a good substitute.

In contrast, I've tried Kingsoft Office and they seem to be a better MSO replacement option. My bro says the spreadsheet doesn't support the matrix multiplication function (which Excel has), but he bought the Kingsoft Office anyway just to test it out, said it was cheap enough - I told him he could just download the eval copy. I think he just likes to support the underdog.

They don't have a Microsoft Outlook substitute though. Outlook sucks (CPU hog, crashes, hangs, search needs improvement) but the stuff it does (works with Exchange, calendaring, etc) is necessary in many organizations.

[1] See: http://tinyurl.com/ykvya22

Lots of the bugs there look familiar to me: formatting not being saved, bullets not behaving correctly.

And stuff like this (I just picked one of the bugs from the above list which caught my eye):
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=56449
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=74707

It's been around for years (reported in 2005) and still not fixed (implications of bug: you cannot step through a find-and-replace within a selection - it has to be for the whole document).

I just tested it on 3.2 and the bug is still there!

In contrast when I search for bugs in Word 2007 I see the usual crash bugs (I doubt OOo is immune) and stuff like:

"For example, in Word 2007, if you use a nonbreaking hyphen to join
two words, the new combined word is flagged as misspelled (which is fine),
but then you cannot "Ignore All" instances of the combined word when doing a
spell-check. Wen doing a spell-check, you must ignore each individual
instance of the combined word throughout the document. As you can imagine,
if you have a proper name that includes a nonbreaking hyphen on every page of
a 200 page contract, individually ignoring each instance of the combined word
during spell-check can get very annoying very quickly. Thanks for any
replies!"

I also have been very annoyed with Word 2007 by one bug - sometimes when I try to paste something into certain word documents, somehow all the formatting isn't copied over when it's supposed to (even when I choose "keep source formatting" - some behind the scenes weirdness, it works in other word docs). For example the table and contents are copied and pasted fine, but the font is wrong!

Re:Overreach.

[wye43]

Well you are a festizio ! See, I can make up words too, sister.

Re:Overreach.

[PinkyDead]

You forget that this settlement was agreed with the EU by Microsoft.

The original position of the EU was probably that Microsoft was abusing their monopoly position and they should be denied the right to ship a browser with Windows at all - which would put Windows at a serious disadvantage.

Remember that a similar case in the US had the DOJ at one point looking for the break up of Microsoft.

This browser "solution", while farcical to you is in fact the best compromise that they could come up with, and given the alternatives I don't think your point of view would be supported even by Microsoft.

Re:Overreach.

[complete loony]

But didn't that start the other way around? Apple first used their near monopoly in the hardware music player business to push their iTunes music store...

Re:Overreach.

[anss123]

You can use other programs instead of iTunes to put music on your iPod. Do a Google search.

It's a bit of a PITA though. Got an iPod last xmas and I didn't find a way to get it to play the music I put on it. It could play games and show videos but not music. I finally managed to get it working by using iTunes on an old PC, toggling a checkbox and first then it could play the music I had copied over earlier.

Not very nice of Apple.

In any case I eventually went back to my crappy old MP3 player since it turns out I just want to play music. First sign of old age perhaps? Hmm.

Re:Overreach.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

A monopoly is when one company / group is the ONLY one that allows access to a product or service.

Not legally speaking, no. Back in the day standard oil was a monopoly, but you could still buy whale blubber and use it instead. There was an alternative. Heck, the local electricity distribution monopoly in your area still has alternatives, you can just go charge up a truckload of car batteries. Clearly you don't understand that 1% fo the market is not enough to make a difference of the negative effect monopolies can have, which is why legal guidelines use 70% share as a general rule.

You whine that Dell / HP / Acer don't sell OS X - that is APPLE'S fault, not MS's, and even so, if you want OS X you can buy a goddamn Mac.

I don't whine at all, I inform. You're the one pissing and moaning about the law being enforced. How does Apple being at fault for MS's monopoly help HP or any of the others? Does that somehow make illegal acts less damaging to them? If I refuse to let you in my martial arts class does that mean anyone who beats the crap out of you can't be arrested for assault?

I get it, your preferred products aren't popular.

See here's the problem. You don't know jack or shit about this subject but you assume everyone else is as prejudiced on the issue as you are. Here's an idea. Go read the law and a little bit of history about why they were written. Then if you have an informed opinion, come back.

Re:Overreach.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But didn't that start the other way around? Apple first used their near monopoly in the hardware music player business to push their iTunes music store... --

Apple has never been ruled to have monopoly influence in the music player market. The EU looked into it and decided they did not have that much influence, mostly because of media playing cell phones. So until they have enough influence they can legally bundle anything they like with it.

Re:Overreach.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You're right Apple doesn't use OS X to promote iTunes, but that's because they use their monopoly on the mp3 market instead.

First, Apple has never been ruled to have such a monopoly and in the EU it was investigated and rejected. Second, even if Apple did have such a monopoly, MS has twice the market share for media playing applications, which they achieved by bundling with Windows, which is a monopoly as determined by previous court rulings. To go after Apple after doing nothing to stp MS would be some pretty crazy application of the law.

From what I understand, the iPod requires iTunes to be of any use at all...

Your understanding is flawed. Songbird works fine for every iPod except the touch.

To me that's worse than simply bundling software with your product for which there are alternatives that the user can get easily.

You're being self-centered. You're not the victim in either case. The companies most damaged by MS's behavior are OEMs and other Web browser makers. The effect upon you and the rest of society is just the trickle down effect. There are serious negative effects for you such as slowing the progress of Web technologies. Whether you care about that or not depends upon you.

Re:Overreach.

[david_thornley]

I'll tell you one thing society is coming to. It's coming to a pass where there are people totally ignorant of anti-trust law, and the historical and economic underpinnings of it, and not only post on Slashdot but get modded (2, Interesting) (at the time I write this)!

Re:Overreach.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Hello? WINE HQ? I have a job for you, it pays well...

Opera downloads tripled

[bunratty]

Opera Software, based in Oslo, said downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland, and Spain had tripled since the screen began to appear.

So now that makes six Opera users. And they'll all be crowing that this was all due to a complaint raised first by Opera!

Re:Opera downloads tripled

[amicusNYCL]

downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland, and Spain had tripled

So now that makes six Opera users. And they'll all be crowing that this was all due to a complaint raised first by Opera!

I just want to point out that would be a minimum of 15 users, if each country started with 1 and went to 3.

Also, this was all because of Opera.

Posting from the US. 16, bitches!

Re:Opera downloads tripled

[aldld]

Seven, if you count the fact that I test my websites (for a max. of 1 minute) in Opera!

Re:Opera downloads tripled

[hkmwbz]

Opera actually has about 50 million desktop users and about 50 million users of Opera Mini. That's 100 million users (before counting users of other products). Mozilla claims that Firefox has 300-400 million users. Do the math.

Awareness is the best result.

[headkase]

The best outcome of this in light of Microsoft's monopoly position is that it breaks how they got there: many people use Internet Explorer simply because they are unaware of alternatives. This puts that front-and-center. No longer will a more experienced user get strange looks when they mention another browser with a funny name. Instead quite a few people will have seen the ballot screen and especially initially it will raise the talk about them. Long-term it is good as well, once people become aware they have a choice in browsers they may also as well begin to wonder if they have choices elsewhere.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[cosm]

It is a shame it takes this sort of spelling out to make people understand. Instead of spreading computer literacy, lets just continually dumb down our systems. Idiocracy, here we come!

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[CannonballHead]

many people use Internet Explorer simply because they are unaware of alternatives.

Did they want to be aware of alternatives? Or is this something where we are deciding they SHOULD be aware whether they want to be or not?

Which does not sound very consumer-oriented.

Why didn't the EU just force Microsoft to pass a certain set of standards with their browser or give users the choice? At least then they'd allow Microsoft to prevent the confusion by producing a quality product.

In my experience, the general user would rather not have to deal with the browser thing. Most people that aren't computer literate enough to download one they like (Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome, Firefox, etc) or be able to talk intelligently about said choices usually just call it "the browser" or "the firefox" or "that icon" or "the Internet." They don't care about WHAT it is. They aren't interested in using a browser. They are interested in accessing the internet, usually very specific pages on the internet.

It's only the geek population that cares which browser they use. Unless they have security issues, of course... in which case I still say my choice to MS is better: make a secure browser or give a choice.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[biryokumaru]

If you want everyone to understand Moby Dick, you're going to have to make it a picture book. If you don't, you're an elitist.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[cosm]

Educate the masses.

Moby Dick isn't the only book in the library. Is Charles Dickens to be blamed writing above the average reading level? Or is it the library's fault for pushing the book to hard on the ignorant masses?

Neither. Same applies to Microsoft.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[Cryacin]

But it contains Electrolytes!

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[PhrstBrn]

The reason why so many push for getting rid of IE is because the browser itself sucks. Microsoft isn't improving it fast enough, or in the right places. Web developers want to get rid of it.

Most JS has to be written twice in order to work with IE, and getting CSS styled pages to render correctly in IE takes a whole lot more work. IE has too many rendering quirk that don't exist in other browsers - margins where there shouldn't any, flat out rendering the incorrect number of pixels in padding and margins in some cases. And the tools for IE aren't where they need to be, so fixing it is a game of whack-a-mole. Best day for the web is the day IE dies.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[williamhb]

many people use Internet Explorer simply because they are unaware of alternatives.

Correction: many people use Internet Explorer simply because they don't care about alternatives. Seriously, to you it might be a big deal whether you're using Firefox 3.0 or 3.5 or Chrome's latest beta... for most people out there it's just the logo you click to get through to Facebook.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[Hurricane78]

Well, some people here still prefer KISS to actual efficiency and elegance. As if it were something good.
Idiocracy here we come, indeed...

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[gangien]

It's a shame that people don't understand what? that they have a choice of a browser? and that all those choices, are for the most part almost identical?

Seriously, it's not a shame, it's people choosing what they do or don't invest their time in.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[Pence128]

I think you're overestimating the average user's aversion to reading.

"Firefox? I think I saw that in a popup once. It was anoying, so I just clicked Internet. Stupid Microsoft"

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[cosm]

If I choose not to invest my time in automotive research, should I have the government come down and force the largest automobile manufacturer to hand out a 'these are your automotive options' because I am unwilling to do the research?

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[PhrstBrn]

You're assuming that before Firefox came around, IE was the only browser... If I had to choose between developing for exclusively IE, or exclusively for every-other-browser-that's-not-IE, I'd choose the latter. The choice has nothing to do with web standards or open source, or whatever other buzzword that is out there, IE is just harder to develop for. It's that simple.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[gangien]

umm no. what's your point? i don't think the government should have any say in the browsers.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[Lulfas]

It has what plants crave! -Go away, batin'.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[lennier]

If I choose not to invest my time in automotive research, should I have the government come down and force the largest automobile manufacturer to hand out a 'these are your automotive options' because I am unwilling to do the research?

Ooh, a car analogy! Let me play!

If every car had incompatible steering wheels, engines you weren't allowed to look at or touch, took different manufacturer-specific brands of petrol, and the largest one came free (and was in fact mandatory - you couldn't get from the kitchen to the bathroom without using the car) with every house bought from the #1 house manufacturer, and came with a special set of patented wheels which could also drive down a special railway line owned by the same company, which was actively lobbying shopping malls to install these special lines (and was also a large real estate developer and the owner of the #2 or #3 shopping mall complex)... and no other car could use those patented wheels or lines... and people buying houses were for the most part unaware that they could get for free another car which came with ordinary wheels...

Oh, and meanwhile, roving Mafia gangs are stealing cars while they're driving, which happens especially on those 'special' lines because they're built very shoddily, and hijack those cars to smash into banks and steal cash, and the only way to stop this is to visit the manufacturer every month and have them bolt mysterious black boxes into the engine, which you can't look at, and sometimes make your car only drive to certain shopping malls, but people still get their cars hijacked to rob banks all the time regardless...

Yes, if something like that were to happen I'd expect there might be some backlash from an 'open wheels not private rails!'' movement and government might be convinced to step in and at least make that car company give out a free pamphlet... if not even a slap on the wrist with a damp celery, though that might be going a bit far.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[cosm]

Thats what I was implying, couldn't tell if you were. If people are unwilling to invest in research and it lends to their misfortune, then its their own damn fault and there should be no intervening body, read, no browser selection screen. The shame is that the majority doesn't understand that they have choice or don't care to look into it, and that because of that lack of knowledge, the Microsoft is forced to pay the price.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[ClosedSource]

"You're assuming that before Firefox came around, IE was the only browser"

It was true enough to convince the DOJ. Perhaps you could have helped MS convince the court that there were plenty of browsers around competing with IE.

No matter how hard IE may have been to develop for, developing for IE plus developing for other browsers would obviously be harder still.

Web developers around here have been whining about IE and Flash for years. It's time to "man-up" and just do your job. If it were easy, they wouldn't call it work.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[Onymous Coward]

So having multiple browsers makes for extra work?

You would prefer there be only one browser?

And are you saying cross-browser development didn't exist before 2006?

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[TheLink]

Only if they have been convicted of behaving badly enough to require it.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[CannonballHead]

I agree. But since when is "violating open standards" illegal? Since when should that be cause to force a company to encourage competition by forcing them to refer to their competitors?

I am not saying that IE is a good browser. I'm saying the EU's response was bad and doesn't make sense to me. Should something have done? Well, I already said what I would have recommended. Force MS to make a good browser that complies to standards. At least that would have given MS the option of making a browser that "worked" according to the open standards and actually encouraging even MORE competition.

But I'm guessing that wouldn't have been good because then people would have no excuse to tell people not to use IE. As much as I hate to say it, I think a lot of people that hate MS are glad that IE is still a bad product. If it wasn't, the reasons to hate MS - other than spite - are getting fewer. :)

(I'm not accusing you of hating MS out of spite or whatever. You even spelled their name without a dollar sign, which is getting rare these days... :P)

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[ClosedSource]

I'm saying that most web sites didn't have to worry about supporting multiple web browsers. That doesn't mean there was no cross-browser development - it just didn't have much of a business case at that time.

As far as having a single browser is concerned - if simplicity of development was the highest priority, than yes, a single browser would be best. Note that it wouldn't have to be IE.

Of course, there are advantages to having multiple browsers as well, just not simplicity of development.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[hkmwbz]

Did they want to be aware of alternatives? Or is this something where we are deciding they SHOULD be aware whether they want to be or not?

Making people aware, thus giving them actual choice, benefits everyone.

Why didn't the EU just force Microsoft to pass a certain set of standards with their browser or give users the choice?

That's much, much harder to enforce.

Re:Awareness is the best result.

[Onymous Coward]

the introduction of Firefox and its subsequent growth in the market is what made the extra work

This quote is not merely politically incorrect. It comes from a very skewed perspective. Sometimes unpopularity coincides with wrongness. This perspective seems to be sitting pretty squarely in that part of the Venn diagram. (Keep in mind I'm not saying you are bad. It's just the perspective that's really off. You can adjust perspective. Good luck.)

There have always been and will always be multiple browsers. Saying the existence of other browsers is what caused extra work is like saying the presence of pedestrians in the city is a problem as you drive through. The pedestrians are going to be there. The question is whether the pedestrians are politely complying with rules of the road.

Before Firefox there was Netscape. Hey, before Internet Explorer there was Netscape:

the introduction of Internet Explorer and its subsequent growth in the market is what made the extra work

The solution to web development hassle is standards conformance, not browser monopoly.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Threni]

I wonder how much money they ever made from ads, and if they regret it, given that 5 years on they're still trying to lose the bad aroma it produced? It was bad enough wading through all the ads on the net, without extra ads built into the browser - what were they thinking?

Opera - the browser that could have been king.

So?

[XanC]

They're all sane.

Re:So?

[Mad Merlin]

They're all sane.

No they're not, IE is included in the list.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[biryokumaru]

From my understanding it is the pages fault and not Operas.

It's the page's fault the same way it's the river's fault that my car isn't a boat.

Jorl has spoken indeed ....

[unity100]

but i wonder what are Harald and Jarlssen doing. they havent been around since the last pillage ....

(sorry i couldnt resist)

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[amicusNYCL]

I wonder how much money they ever made from ads, and if they regret it, given that 5 years on they're still trying to lose the bad aroma it produced?

Given that Opera has not had ads for nearly 5 years, it would probably be fair to say that many Opera users today have never used a version that did have ads. In fact, Opera has been ad-free for long enough that I'm genuinely surprised when I see someone (like the OP) who still thinks it's ad-supported. I would think that anyone who would have been using Opera 5 years ago would at least be up to date enough to know that it doesn't have ads anymore. But, apparently, I would be wrong, as the OP appears to be one of those people. Sort of makes me wonder if the browser he's using is branded "Phoenix" or "Firebird".

Some things, you need to 'force'.

[unity100]

the food health standards are forced too. despite most of the populace knowing no shit about them. but, it is necessary.

same thing here.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[mobby_6kl]

Well you could argue about food safety standards too...

But no, I don't see how this crap is necessary at all, and I'm saying this as a long time Opera user.

Either the clueless people will be clicking randomly, which won't result in any improvements since they'll just stick to whatever they picked initially, or the were already familiar with that browser and would have downloaded it anyway. Then there's the fact that the top five vendors felt it's cool to keep everybody else out of the view, nicely hidden by some horizontal scrolling and not in the same shuffling pool as the top five. Yeah, that's fair.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[gangien]

it's not necessary at all. You think the milk you drink is fresh and ok because the FDA makes it, or because you wouldn't buy it, if it wasn't?

This is even more ridiculous, because no one's health is at stake. It's a friggin browser, and all of the major ones are available for free anyways.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[Darkness404]

...Um, if the FDA would go away tomorrow, most things would still remain the same, only a lot more people would be aware of what they were eating and tainted foods would go bankrupt.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[icebraining]

Don't you get it? It's not for the benefit of the clueless users, it's for our benefit, by having an internet less dominated by IE. Maybe its market share will drop enough to justify the usage of technologies like HTML5 which IE doesn't support.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[mirix]

And people would die in the process. Some things need to be regulated.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[clarkkent09]

It may or may not be the case that the FDA is needed, but one can argue about it, it's not nearly as clear cut as your post suggests. For example, google Milton Friedman and FDA. But the reason I am replying is this idea that the moment government stops regulating something, it becomes an anarchy in which anyone can do whatever they like. In a free market every incentive is for food producers to provide safe products. The moment a food company kills somebody through neglect, that company is finished just through the damage to its reputation, never mind the lawsuits. The elaborate and costly safety procedures mandated by law don't necessarily make the food safer, but they do make it more expensive which means that the poorest people can only afford the cheapest and lowest quality foods which also causes health problems. In case of drugs, people are also killed through excessive safety regulation which delays drug research and makes the drugs much more expensive. You have to look at both sides of the equation before taking even the food safety as an example of something that obviously needs regulation. Regulating the choice of browsers, which by the way are all freely downloadable, is ridiculous.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[toadlife]

The moment a food company kills somebody through neglect, that company is finished just through the damage to its reputation, never mind the lawsuits.

The food is a terrible example of something to leave up to completely free market. Without the agencies like the FDA, co-ops would collude to hide the source of dangerous products and we would have no one to sue.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[jonadab]

As a web developer, I was kind of hoping HTML5 would eventually just whither and die. I view it as a major step in the wrong direction, back to the bad old days before XML.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[icebraining]

What's your alternative? And if you say Flash, don't bother replying.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[Vectormatic]

silverlight?

*runs*

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[jonadab]

> What's your alternative?

Except for one relatively minor pet peeve (namely, the inability to put block-level elements inside a paragraph), I still haven't figured out what's wrong with XHTML 1.0. Certainly nothing so major as to require a complete overhaul. Throw in XML's inherent extensibility, with the ability to easily mix-in content from other namespaces, such as SVG and whatnot, and you have everything you need.

HTML 5 does a whole lot of things HTML itself doesn't need to do. But my main beef with it is that it goes back to the bad old days, before XML, back to the harder-to-parse harder-to-maintain non-wellformed markup we were so glad to get away from about a decade ago. Do Not Want.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[unity100]

free market never works that way.

Re:Some things, you need to 'force'.

[hkmwbz]

He who dominates the browser, dominates the web. The web is one of the most important pieces of our modern society. So yes, it's not "just a browser". It's THE FUCKING browser.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Mad Merlin]

The whole point of the GP's post was that perhaps Opera's long term flirt with ads has permanently tarnished the name, meaning it doesn't even matter what they've done in the past 5 years.

Just a thought

[aldld]

Just a thought, how many people would use Internet Explorer if it didn't come with Windows? (And assuming that they have some way to get it, through some other browser)

Re:Just a thought

[John Hasler]

> Just a thought, how many people would use Internet Explorer if it didn't
> come with Windows?

Thousands. Probably even some who don't work for Microsoft.

Re:Just a thought

[toddestan]

For a while IE was the most popular browser on the Mac, until better browsers came along and Microsoft stopped updating it.

Not a metric that makes me want to buy stocks.

[zullnero]

After all, most people I know that buy new computers and don't like IE only start up IE in order to download another browser. All this version really does is take one step out of the process. People who aren't as computer literate would probably already have a preference for IE anyway and just stick with it out of fear of the unknown. I doubt a lot of grannies who have used IE for the past 6 years are getting their new computer, looking at the browser selection screen, and saying "hmm. Maybe I should give this one a try now". Besides...IE has always had less user share in Europe than elsewhere, partially as a result of paranoia towards the scary foreign corporation and partly because of warm cuddly feelings about using a browser developed by devs all over the world or one that is basically a European-built browser.

Re:Not a metric that makes me want to buy stocks.

[edalytical]

If Windows came with wget or curl I'd probably never have started IE even to download another browser. Just sayin'.

Re:Not a metric that makes me want to buy stocks.

[jmac_the_man]

It comes with an FTP client.

Re:Not a metric that makes me want to buy stocks.

[tumnasgt]

Though, grannies are probably very likely to ring up a family member or the company they bought the machine off, thanks to IE looking completely different from what it did on their old computer. For the easiest upgrade from IE6, I usually would use Firefox with the wrong desktop icon, they can find it to use, and the slight difference in icons is usually not a problem. Much to my amazement, by far the biggest problem I find users have is going from "Favorites" in IE to "Bookmarks" in pretty well everything else. That and the slightly different wording in context menus to save linked files.

Re:Not a metric that makes me want to buy stocks.

[JackieBrown]

If you are coming from XP to Windows 7 and never upgraded your IE, opera (and even to a lesser exent firefox) would probably look more familair thane ie 8

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[glwtta]

I would think that anyone who would have been using Opera 5 years ago would at least be up to date enough to know that it doesn't have ads anymore.

I don't know, I haven't used Opera in years and I did have a vague Opera-"ad supported" association in the back of my mind. People will naturally expend only so much effort keeping up with marginal web browsers, and first impressions can stick with you for a while. I couldn't, for example, tell you if Konqueror has stopped sucking in the last 5 years (not to pick on Konqueror in particular - just an example).

And yes, I remember the Firebird fiasco, too - six years is not that long a time.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[amicusNYCL]

Right, my point is that 18-25 year olds using their Wii or Nokia phone have probably never even heard that Opera was ad-supported. Kids in high school now who sort of "came online" as Firefox was gaining popularity may hear about Opera at some point online (such as.. here) and would be hearing about what it's doing now, not what it was doing in 2005. The only mentions of Opera using ads, like here, also point out how it hasn't been doing that for 5 years.

The old guys? Even though I would expect most of us to know that Opera doesn't use ads, I can expect there to be a group of people who probably hate them for ever advertising in the first place. I don't think that's a very large group, though. There are other, more worthy corporations to focus our hate on now, such as Sony and Apple.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[228e2]

Parent is modded funny, but hes right.

If it is the page's fault, then they should render wrong in FF/IE/etc, not just Opera.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[digitalunity]

Development costs money. Linux itself couldn't have come as far as it has so quickly without corporate investment. They took a shot at an ad-supported development model and it didn't work. I can't blame them for trying.

We can't all have sugar daddies like the Mozilla Foundation.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Mistlefoot]

and his point is that he, like me, hasn't had a problem with Real Player crashing my machine in years.

Because I won't install Real Player on my machine after past issues.

There are many browser options, as this article is about. The OP does not owe Opera the opportunity to be installed on his machine when such quality choices exist.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Hurricane78]

Since when are one or two people enough to assume a globally smelt “bad aroma”??

Actually those are the first two I know, who even know or remember Opera having ads. Geeks.

Meanwhile, my whole family loves Opera. And in Poland, I hear, it’s the number one browser.
Also, everybody here who tried surfing over the phone, has heard of Opera. :)
So that’s what most people know of it.

I usually get two reactions from people I recommend Opera to:
1. They don’t know what it is. But since I show that I like Opera, and they can feel it, they get drawn in.
2. After a week or so, they wouldn’t want to miss it.

For some it’s Firefox, and that is just as good.
Only for IE users I have no heart at all. Since I used to be a webdev. And that thing has caused my nights to be nightmares for years. I would right here sign a law that said that every person using IE past next month will get shot. Without blinking. That’s how horrible it was. Like a war wound kinda...

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[ClosedSource]

"I wonder how much money they ever made from ads, and if they regret it, given that 5 years on they're still trying to lose the bad aroma it produced?"

If the "bad aroma" of advertising on nearly every web page a person has seen on any browser isn't a problem, I doubt that most people would worry about it.

In fact, it's possible that non-technical folks running Opera in the old days didn't notice if the ads were generated by opera or the web page they were viewing. Only fanatics get excited by these issues.

Re:Microsoft Giving Rival Browsers a Lift?

[shentino]

It's called patching up the bruises that MS left behind when it hit them below the belt.

Re:Just a Nightmare

[mcneely.mike]

Dang.... i wouldn't even live on the same planet as Microtoft if i could get elsewhere...
Come on Kirk... scoot back in time and pick me up.

I'll be the one willing to exchange a nice stout for a Romulan ale.
Linux... Live long and prosper!

EU

[Exception Duck]

kudos to the European union.

this and reading they will oppose ACTA's 3strike rule makes me want to join

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[kiddygrinder]

so you're saying that it's actually your car's fault that the river isn't a road?

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[ewanm89]

Opera ditched the ads a couple of years ago now.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[codepunk]

And yes it did tarnish the name, I have not touched it since I downloaded a ad supported version. I did not even know that they dropped ad support from the product. I am a perfectly happy firefox customer now so yes I would say it cost them a bundle of market share.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[shutdown -p now]

It does seem to render some pages wrong though. From my understanding it is the pages fault and not Operas.

Google in particular likes to write browser-specific web apps - "we support browser X, Y and Z" - where the list is usually "IE, Firefox, Chrome" these days. There used to be a time when they did browser detection in GMail, and show "this browser is not supported" for Opera. Lately the same goes for Buzz.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera hasn't had ads for years.

That's cool. Other browswers seem to be full of them.

Guess we can't use Opera at Ars though.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[AnonymouseUser]

The pop-up blocker that Opera had back in their ad-supported days nullified that "bad aroma", IMO. I only vaguely remember those never-ending pop-up pranks that would plague (and ultimately crash) IE.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[at_slashdot]

He's the same guy who thinks that Linux is hard to use.

Re:Nice try trying to disguise fascism as "choice"

[JackieBrown]

Forcing this ballot screen on them was nothing but tyrannical socialist interventionism to make government bureaucrats look good and nothing more!

I might agree with this if they were required to force another browser to be installed. In this case, they are letting people opt-in to IE, firefox, or opera. They are not forcing anyone to pick a browser.

Stats without context are useless

[IBABad1]

I wonder how many of those people who used the browser choice screen to download Firefox were just going to download and install it anyways?

Shrug, only idiots think it

[SmallFurryCreature]

Frankly, anyone who is going to use Opera, knows that there are no ads in it for over half a decade now. That you are so badly informed says more about you then Opera.

Do you also refuse to use Windows because of its ME taint?

Re:Shrug, only idiots think it

[rolfc]

Microsoft has a way of always create new taint!

Re:People are probably just picking the first item

[AniVisual]

I'd say that people are just picking the one with Internet in its name.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[siloko]

The OP does not owe Opera the opportunity to be installed on his machine when such quality choices exist.

Fair enough - but you can't blame Opera for the GP's 5 year abstinence - if the guy was so offended by the ad's that he not only hasn't tried the browser but has also managed to filter any news about Opera since then he's obviously not very technically curious. It is clear that from a technical point of view Opera has been up there for some time . . .

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[somersault]

It's possible that they do render "wrong" in those browsers. Other browsers used to have to mimic IE behaviour to show things the "right" way, I don't know if that's still the case but I suspect it probably is. Also there are browser specific JavaScript/CSS hacks that have to be done to get things to look right sometimes, so if Opera has been neglected in testing then it is in fact the designer's fault rather than Opera's fault if things don't show up right.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Threni]

No-one cares what Firefox is/was called. This isn't a `branding` issue - it's a `pissing off users with adverts` issue. A lot of people clearly remember it - there are many alternatives in software and no reason to keep popping back to see if something still sucks.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[jonadab]

> Given that Opera has not had ads for nearly 5 years

Opera's been around for a good long while, though. I think it may actually still be true that Opera was shareware, which you were supposed to pay for if you wanted to continue using it after a trial period, for most of its history.

A product's reputation doesn't change overnight.

Of course, some things are more easily forgotten than others. I still think of Outlook as the only mail client that launches executable attachments automatically by default. I suspect it doesn't actually do that any more, but I'm not eager to install it and find out, either. I also think of Outlook as sending badly malformed HTML by default, even if all the user does is type in some words. Does it still do that? I don't actually know. I've never used it myself. And, for some odd reason, I don't want to.

People have other things to do with their time besides going back and trying things they disliked in the past to see if they're better now.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[jonadab]

> I couldn't, for example, tell you if Konqueror has stopped sucking in the last 5 years

In a word, no.

Ballot screen installed, where is it?

[cbope]

I got the browser ballot app pushed out via Windows update installed on several of my machines recently, including XP, Vista and Win7. Funny thing is, I have never actually seen the ballot screen. It's never appeared. I haven't located an applet for it or any way to make it appear. Bit strange.

Could it be because IE is not a default browser on any of these machines? Probably.

Re:Ballot screen installed, where is it?

[arndawg]

Yes. Only machines with IE as the default browser will get the ballot screen.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[A12m0v]

Actually, Chrome is the quality choice. IMO. But you should definitely try it.

fixed that for you.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[Squeakstar]

Ok so again for them late comers - opera hasn't had ads for 5 years or so. Moving on... Opera 10.5 has really put a rocket up the internet-experience-rear-end of a teeny samsung nc10 netbook running windows 7 ultimate. wow-weee - even my girlfriend noticed how whizzy it was when for a laugh we displayed all 1300 items on a shopping page and it finished in almost an instant. In IE8 it couldn't render fast enough to keep up with scrolling down the page on 20 or so products. We've also been exposed to opera through Wii, Nintendo DS and on my windows mobile - i probably wouldn't have even given it a lookin on windows if it wasn't for the exposure on the other platforms. Good one Opera!!!!

Not to go M$ bashing again, but....

[hesaigo999ca]

I have seen some FF download links which download a version of FF which is a rewrite of the IE GUI under a new interface looking like FF, and no one can tell the difference. All new hx0rs use the webhtml components in vs to create a FF like environement using the IE engine, then all is acting the way it should....and no one is the wiser....also letting the hax0r create a keylogging or capturing event to the interface. How do we know the download for FF is the real one, and you are still technically using an IE engine to download it to then install it and start using it, so from the get go, you would have to already have it installed on windows7 machines and then say just use FF instead of IE if it were to be a REAL compromise.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[amicusNYCL]

and his point is that he, like me, hasn't had a problem with Real Player crashing my machine in years.

Because I won't install Real Player on my machine after past issues.

Comparing Opera and Real Player is a bit disingenuous. Real Player has always been POS software, Opera has always been a quality browser. It just used to be a quality browser that had ads in it, now it's a quality browser without ads in it.

Real was never high-quality software, Opera has been.

The OP does not owe Opera the opportunity to be installed on his machine when such quality choices exist.

Fair enough, but one could say the same about Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[amicusNYCL]

People will naturally expend only so much effort keeping up with marginal web browsers, and first impressions can stick with you for a while.

Indeed they can, my first experience installing Linux, I guess about 7 or 8 years ago, ended in total disaster, and it completely put me off the entire platform until very recently. Seeing how usable it actually is though, sort of makes me wish I had given it another shot sooner, you know? You never know what you're missing.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[amicusNYCL]

People have other things to do with their time besides going back and trying things they disliked in the past to see if they're better now.

I understand that, like I posted above I had the same experience with Linux, one bad experience turned me off of the whole thing for a long time. Linux has always had a stigma for being difficult to use or configure, even though recently people have made an effort to improve things. But like you said, the recent efforts don't matter if you've already pissed someone off in the past.

Why Join?

[andersh]

Why join? Iceland is already covered by the same acts for all intents and purposes through the EFTA and the EEA-agreement between EFTA and the EU.

The browser election update from Microsoft is even called the European Economic Area (EEA) update :)

As a Norwegian I think of Iceland as family, and we would rather help Iceland in any way we can than see it fall to the EU. Like my own nation your country was only recently freed from a neighboring colonial power, stay independent, Iceland, stay free.

Re:Why Join?

[Exception Duck]

Hehe, this is an ongoing dispute.
I agree with you on many levels, the big problem now is our currency... I hope to get as much power out of the hands of Icelandic politicians as possible. I trust the bureaucrats in Brussels more than politicians.

The best idea I've heard recently is for Sweden,Iceland,Norway,Denmark,Faroe Islands,Finland and Greenland to form a new coalition.

Combined we would be one of the 10th largest economy in the world, coming before Russia even.

http://svenskfinland.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/dagens-nyheter-the-nordic-countries-ought-to-form-a-federation/

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[omfgnosis]

Only if you presuppose that the other browsers are bug-free. Or that the page in question doesn't hack around bugs in those respective browsers, sending something hacky to Opera in the process.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[hkmwbz]

If it is the page's fault, then they should render wrong in FF/IE/etc, not just Opera.

The problem is, many sites will serve specific code to maybe IE and Firefox ("Netscape"), and any other browser gets nothing, or a broken mess. That, or they specifically and silently block Opera from getting the right code path (don't ask me why). Most of the time simply sending Opera down the Firefox code path makes it work fine (make the UA string spoof Firefox).

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[hkmwbz]

I wonder how much money they ever made from ads, and if they regret it, given that 5 years on they're still trying to lose the bad aroma it produced? It was bad enough wading through all the ads on the net, without extra ads built into the browser - what were they thinking?

I'm guessing they were thinking about survival. Back when Opera had ads there was no alternative revenue stream. As an independent company they needed revenue to survive. Once they invented the search field and Google offered them cash to forward searches to them, Opera dropped the ads. All they needed was a working business model.

I know it's common that companies use browsers as a loss leader (Microsoft) or the browser vendor can live freely off of other companies (Mozilla). Opera is the exception. The company had to survive off of the browser alone. It was the only product they had.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[hkmwbz]

It would have cost them a lot more to cut off their only revenue stream without any alternatives. As soon as Google started paying them for passing along searches to them and Opera realized that it could work as a business model, they dumped the ads. Not everyone can get free money from someone else (Mozilla) or have other products that pay the bills (MS, Google). Opera needed to pay the bills. Not paying the bills would cost the company its life. Market share vs. the very existence of the company? Get real.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[hkmwbz]

Fail. Opera crushes Chrome at performance now. Sorry.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[toddestan]

The really funny thing is that it seems that absolutely no one remembers that there were two versions of Opera available - an ad-free version that you had to buy, or the free version with ads that everyone remembers. I know this as I actually bought it - it wasn't very expensive and well worth it when the main competition was an aging Netscape 4 or IE. I wonder if they would have been better off with just the paid version, as then people would remember Opera as one of the last browsers to go free after IE and Netscape?

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[nagnamer]

Parent is modded funny, but hes right.

If it is the page's fault, then they should render wrong in FF/IE/etc, not just Opera.

From my own experience, it's been VERY difficult to break Opera. It mostly boils down to Opera being a bit more strict towards errors in the code, and other browsers are generally more accommodating. But an error is still an error, and it's the designer/developer's responsibility to fix it. There are probably some rare cases when only Opera has a bug not present in other browsers, but I've never seen that happen myself.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[nagnamer]

No-one cares what Firefox is/was called. This isn't a `branding` issue - it's a `pissing off users with adverts` issue. A lot of people clearly remember it - there are many alternatives in software and no reason to keep popping back to see if something still sucks.

I find it funny that people were 'annoyed' by Opera ads. It's not like it was forcing you to use it or anything. And you knew beforehand it was ad-supported. I downloaded Opera, knowing it displays ads, and knowing that at that time it was normal to have a few freeware products around that were ad-supported, and I enjoyed Opera's features and speed ignoring the ads. IIRC, the ads were fairly small, as big as maybe one extra toolbar or two. It wasn't much of a deal when you considered the fact that it had integrated e-mail, chat, etc. I used most of those features and was quite satisfied.

Re:Opera with or without ads?

[nagnamer]

If the "bad aroma" of advertising on nearly every web page a person has seen on any browser isn't a problem, I doubt that most people would worry about it.

Back in those days, every other free (as in beer) app had some form of advertising built in. At any time, I had at least three of those. It was quite normal.