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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."
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.
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...
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?
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.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
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.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
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!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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.
Shh.
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.
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.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Presumably they can track where the users come from via referer HTTP header.
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".
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
the food health standards are forced too. despite most of the populace knowing no shit about them. but, it is necessary.
same thing here.
Read radical news here
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)
They're all sane.
No they're not, IE is included in the list.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
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.
sic transit gloria mundi
Pay attention: they said that the download rate increased 3x compared to other main releases.
This comment may contain speech figures. Reader discretion is advised.
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.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
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...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
kudos to the European union.
this and reading they will oppose ACTA's 3strike rule makes me want to join
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
so you're saying that it's actually your car's fault that the river isn't a road?
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
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.
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?
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.