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Windows Browser Ballot Glitch Cost Firefox 6-9 Million Downloads
nk497 writes "Microsoft's failure to include the EU browser ballot in Windows 7 SP1 cost Mozilla as many as 9 million Firefox downloads, the organization's head of business affairs revealed. Harvey Anderson said daily downloads of Firefox fell by 63% to a low of 20,000 before the ballot was reinstated, and after the fix, downloads jumped by 150% to 50,000 a day. Over the 18 months the ballot was missing, that adds up to six to nine million downloads — although it's tough to tell if the difference has more to do with Chrome's success or the lack of advertising on Windows systems. The EU is currently investigating the 'glitch,' and Microsoft faces a massive fine for failing to include the screen, which offers download details for different browsers to European Windows users, as part of measures ordered by the EU to balance IE's dominance."
We're calculating lost downloads, now? And I thought lost sales due to piracy was a stupid metric...
As long as it's a monetary fine, M$ won't worry about it. If it's an actual, punative reaction the hire lawyers and drag it out for years while they go ahead with their scheme. Either way, they win.
If said car manufacturer had a monopoly on cars and was attempting a monopoly on perfume then the EU would say yes.
So I can't vote for Chrome to be the next president?
How do you explain something like this? Would you think with all the people Microsoft has in their employ they would assign the duty of EU Compliance Checklist Monitor to someone?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When you have data points both before and after the time period you are trying to estimate the values for it isn't extrapolation you idiot. It's interpolation.
1. You philistine, that is Art . Kudos to you, valiant troll on your glorious FP
2. If they're so dumb that they don't immediately use IE to download a better browser, does the Mozilla Foundation really want them as users?!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Hah! If you believe it was a glitch, then I have a bridge to sell you. Noone in Microsoft noticed this issue for over a year? No QA process found this?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Look at the whole French Newspaper/Google debacle that's going on right now. It's a direct symptom of socialism. That's what you get when everyone is entitled to a cut of everyone else's work.
The more you peeps post bashing socialism, the more it sounds like a good thing. It's like the corporations are so afraid of people turning to socialism, they go around reminding us that is what they are afraid of.
We get more people bashing socialism then we get people suggesting it. Maybe there is something to this socialism idea after all...
Be seeing you...
The "glitch" is a result of OEMs integrating the wrong version of service packs into their images.
When they integrate the non-EU version of a service pack then the image won't present the "ballot screen" to the user.
Whether you pefre Milton Friedman to the Fight Club school of economics or not, they both share one thing in common. The Chicago School of business (ethics) taught that there is only a simple cost/benefit calculation necessary to determine whether or not to follow the law. If the cost breaking the law is less than the cost of getting caught, you break the law.
In the Fight Club, Ed Norton's character extends this argument to an example a cost/benefit question regarding a potential automobile recall for a flaw resulting with potentially life/death consequences. It's a great example of the need to temper 'free market fundamentalism' with the understanding that there are moral and ethical questions which, if left to those who equate only $'s and market dominance to success.
Since market dominance is reinforces itself (i.e, "Nothing succedes like success."), if we want corporations to act ethically or morally, we need leadership from above. And after Hurrican Sandy, my faith that God will save us, or even inspire us, to address the brewing catastrophes ahead from the anthropomorphic effects we're creating on the planet, has 'dried up'.
But the EU is another story. My hope is that they fine Microsoft the maximum and realize that it's not enough, thereby changing their laws to increase the penalties for rigging the market. Perhaps that would give U.S. senators and representives a working model from which to address the corporate architecture of our society.
Nah... God is a better bet.
It's a good thing that they demand this of Microsoft. I mean, without setting this precedent, how else could we be offered the chance to freely and without jumping over hurdles obtain Firefox (or Chrome, for that matter) on our iPhones?
The iPhone is, in the US at least, at ~33% market share. Come back when they have a 80-90% and I (and the regulators) might start listening.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Why isn't other companies like Apple forced to include a browser selection screen in OSX?
That's what you get when everyone is entitled to a cut of everyone else's work
Yeah thats really horrible it should be that
only a few is entitled to a big cut of everyone else's work
IE isn't even the most popular browser in most EU countries any more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Countries_by_most_used_web_browser.svg&page=1
And according to Wikimedia usage stats, at least, it's not even leading in usage share any more, anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
Pundits are already predicting the end of Microsoft as a dominant player in the industry (which *is* a bit of an exaggeration, so far at least), yet they are still forced to adhere to an almost 10-year old anti-trust decision (an eternity in the industry). In other news, the EU is also considering sanctions against US Steel for their dominant control of the industry in 1955.
So, does this mean that the only reason Firefox is getting those downloads, is because users are bored and pick a pretty icon from the list? :)
Cause even bing.com shows Firefox download page on the first page of "Firefox" query so I'm not sure I can believe in extra 50K people not being able to get Firefox if they want it.
I know users sometimes are not smart enough to find and download something, but this is ridiculous...
Hyperom.com
Because MS make more money from the EU market and sell more goods/services to it than anywhere else. Yes, that includes the US. You're second. Same as in a lot of IT markets. Hell, some of the gaming markets you're not even third.
You can piss them off if you like, but that's the LARGEST market they deal with. Same for Google, eBay and lots of other companies that deal internationally.
Ignore the fine and they seize your assets (i.e. freeze your bank accounts), which means zero effective business in that region. That's billions of Euros lost every year because you got stroppy and didn't pay a fine that you were legally required to pay.
Think that's fiction? They were >50% of your assets, sales and money (i.e. anything stored in the EU, or held by the EU, or sold to the EU) overnight is no small thing. And if you do business in the EU, you're liable to EU taxes and law (including fines) NO MATTER WHAT, so they'd literally just get other countries to take that from your bank account and pay it, no matter where you tried to hide it.
And, as it was, the US investigated this same matter and decided not to do anything. The EU investigated it and charged them billions. AND THEY PAID. Because it's the most incredibly stupid thing in the world not to. The EU literally have the power to say "No, you can't sell Windows" if they like.
In that instance it strikes me more as protectionism than socialism - the French government are considering measures to aid their local businesses, at a cost to a foreign business which is muscling into their territory. Capitalist governments also take various protectionist measures to safeguard their home industries - often by disadvantaging foreign companies more directly through import duties, etc. For instance, the Conservative government in the UK moved to block EU laws that would have disadvantaged our highly capitalistic financial sector.
You could still argue that protectionism and socialism can be linked, for instance by choosing to protect certain home industries as a way of distributing wealth.
I imagine newspapers all over the world are lobbying their governments about Google. They might not succeed but a common part of big business does seem (sadly) to involve complaining to government about other businesses that seem threatening.
Participants in industry lobbying for strong copyright protection is a direct symptom of socialism now? I suppose that might be the case -- is some land of up-is-down, wet-is-dry, and day-is-night.
Well, its more what you get when copyright holders (not everyone) is entitled to a cut of any work that leverages the material on which they hold the copyright (not "everyone else's work" with no qualification), or, what you get with unbridled, strong-property-rights capitalism. Some aspects of the French economy may reflect the fact that, overall, the French mixed economy features more influence from socialism than the mixed economy in, for example, the U.S., but the particular copyright issue between French Newspapers and Google isn't one of them. You'd probably have a better case that the "fair use" limitation on private property rights in copyrights in U.S. law (the reason there isn't a similar big issue in the U.S. as there is a France and other parts of Europe) is a direct symptom of socialism and, particularly, the idea that "everyone is entitled to a cut of everyone else's work".
NO. Slashdot does not need to define every little thing that someone, somewhere might not understand. You're already on the internet, any questions can be answered with a few clicks. If nothing else, anyone with a descent IQ can figure out it's a way to choose a browser from the context. Anyone who has been on Slashdot would know Europe made Microsoft do this to try and keep Microsoft from leveraging Windows to get people to use Internet Explorer.
Because this is what Microsoft agreed to.
Its not a decision, its an agreement they entered into to avoid a trial and a resulting decision. Its quite possible that an actual decision, rather than a negotiated settlement, would have involved greater up-front cost but less in terms of long-term, ongoing restrictions. Microsoft made a choice that they'd rather have what they are now subject to than take the risk of the kind of fines and other up-front consequences at risk in a trial. That may or may not have been a bad decision in retrospect, but it was Microsoft's decision.
Presumably when Apple first has a monopoly in some market, and then illegally leverages that monopoly to gain power in an existing, separate market, and then makes a settlement agreement like Microsoft made to resolve the anti-trust charges over that leveraging, and then violates that agreement the way Microsoft did that is at issue here.
They should develop a search engine to use to push their browser on people and then make the browser install the wrong place to avoid windows protections. If by-passing windows protections is good enough for private data stealing malware then it's good enough for a browser.
It's been six (6) days and still all Windows Live accounts can't change passwords and a lot have been deauthorized on the UW Seattle campus.
I mean, it's just a drive across the bridge from Redmond, and they can't be bothered?
Now THAT isn't a Glitch, it's a Feature
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
As soon as they get to about 90% PC marketshare (don't get pedantic on the "PC" term). They're at what, 15% or so these days? (growing but far from being an abusive monopoly)
Microsoft abused their power by preventing vendors from bundling other browsers. Apple isn't abusing anyone: they make the hardware.
Android has a higher percentage of the smart phone market than Apple has in the PC market. Google has 90%+ of search traffic. You get a new Android, and do a search in the default browser, it defaults to Google. Before OSX is forced to do a browser ballot, Google will be required to do a search engine ballot, given the numbers.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Sure you can! Not like it matters anyway.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Correct, but IE was a part of it. Microsoft was using it's monopoly power to prevent OEMs from bundling other browsers.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
That's because it is a good thing when done right. Most in US screaming about socialism being bad seem to fail to notice that socialism was one of the most powerful drivers behind the rise and staying power of the middle class. 60s and 70s, often hailed as the golden age of USA were the time when the country was very socialist. Taxes on the rich were extremely high and social security net was quite wide-reaching.
It's in fact a very interesting argument that shrinking of middle class is currently going hand in hand with cutting of socialism in favour of capitalism in many strata of society.
Because they themselves suggested it to the court. Both the idea and implementation of browser ballot were microsoft's own suggestions to the court.
I still have a hard time understanding why Microsoft even plays along with this. I would be like "It's my OS, it will have my browser. Suck it or don't use it."
Because Microsoft cares about making money, not about proving some ideological point. As long as doing business in the EU is a substantial net profit, they will keep doing so.
I are badly informed, they crack down on EU companies too, no problem.
If you do business in the EU market and abuse your power as a business, you will be smacked.
New things are always on the horizon
And you don't know the difference between interpolation and extrapolation.
Extrapolation makes assumptions about future and they fail when something extraordinary happens in the future.
Interpolation makes assumptions about past - it's like assuming that missing numbers in 1 2 3 4 ... ... 7 8 9 should have been 5 and 6. Knowing that actual numbers there were 1 and 2 we can assume something out of ordinary happened. Like MS messing up the ballot, for example.
The graph shows an initial peak (when the ballot is introduced?), followed by a decline (and even a big drop in the start of 2011, before the ballot box debacle). Most of the decline in 2011 was quite steady. If they really claim the ballot box was the driving factor, shouldn't there be more of a discontinuity?
(I personally use FF and think the ballot is a good thing - I don't have to manually download FF from the Mozilla site. But when claiming a "loss", you need hard numbers to prove it. The graph, IMO, doesn't support that claim).
Just like capitalism/free markets, when done correctly it's great and absolutely vital to the welfare of the nation. It's when things are taken too far that we have problems.
I don't think people understand what socialism means. The police are a socialist instrument and yet no one complains about having to pay to solve other peoples crimes.
One person isn't saying both things.
60s and 70s, often hailed as the golden age of USA were the time when the country was very socialist.
Wow. I guess some Slashtards don't really know what socialism is.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with it not being extrapolation.
This article states that Google paid (bribed) Mozilla to be their default search provider regardless if there was 1 installation of Firefox or 9 million, so again, Microsoft cost Mozilla nothing because Mozilla already has the money in hand.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Just like capitalism/free markets, when done correctly it's great and absolutely vital to the welfare of the nation. It's when things are taken too far that we have problems.
Sorry, I don't understand. Would you be so kind as to provide an analogy in which slightest traces of either approach will be conflated with the worst excesses of either Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia (or both)? I think I'm not the only one requiring this service.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
In will affect the money Google decides to pay for future contracts. So Microsoft did rob them of future money.
Completely false. According to http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&symbol=NASDAQ%3AMSFT
Foreign Sales: $34,877mil
Domestic Sales: $38,846mil
Surprise, you thought right. Your thinking today, however, is a different matter. You do realize that it's impossible to discuss causal relationships in any meaningful way without projecting counterfactuals. Sometimes you have a projectable baseline, sometimes you don't. Many times the causes of things are a hazy guess. It's only regret that's 20-20.
The problem with the music industry's desire to claim every download as a "lost sale" is that there were a lot of download donkeys out there downloading every song on the planet just for the hell of it: adolescent hoarding behaviour to piss off The Man. Few of these people were prepared to pay $30 for a CD of any description, or a dollar a tune, or even a nickel.
I tend to keep a lot of my crappy photographs. It doesn't cost much to keep them around, and you never know if there might be something of value you don't realize until later. (Did we remember to rotate the tires? Oh hell, this old photo of the dog fetching a stick with the truck in the background tells me we didn't.) If a 1000 crappy photos cost me $5 a year to archive I'd probably dump the majority. Hoarding on the margin does not translate into giant revenue streams.
In the Mozilla situation, one might presume that anyone downloading Firefox as their initial default browser was at least going to give it a fair spin (this can be a short as two minutes, but probably averages at least an hour).
Unfortunately, given the proliferation of shovel-ware we can deduce that first encounters are sticky regardless of intrinsic worth or quality. In the real world we have special senses to determine when we've stepped in something we should scrape off our shoe at the first opportunity. On the net, people are forced to use their brains, with woefully uneven results. Ideally, people would gravitate to the best solution placing far less reliance on the first kiss, but that's not how most humans roll.
Of course Google pays them based on the # of expected downloads. So while they have the money in their hands right now, they also think about the future. Moreover, maybe their contract with Google explicitly states that they have to make sure that their expected number of downloads don't drop because of inactivity etc.
Perl Programmer for hire
>[socialism] is a good thing when done right.
I think a gang mugging someone on the street is immoral. Likewise, one million people electing to take Bill Gates's wealth is immoral. For me, a good outcome is one where I don't end up as a thief.
>shrinking of middle class is currently going hand in hand with cutting of socialism in favour of capitalism
In many ways, the average person today lives better than kings did centuries ago. People don't see how capitalism has worked to float all boats with its tide; instead they jealously worry about how many times more wealth their neighbor has than them. They seek short-sighted ways to fix the "problem" that would end up plunging us all back into the natural state of grinding poverty.
Then explain, rather than criticise.... Be constructive...
Agreed, and while, due to my age, I have fond memories of the 70's, I seem to recall that there was, a "malaise" if you will. in fact, I remember TONS of unemployment and people going hungry, stealing gas, etc in the 70's. Not sure this socialist paradise was as nice as perhaps believed.
I came to post the same thing. The browser is a free download. I don't get what the big deal is. Install Firefox on your own which you can since MS does nothing ot stop you. I wish I could do the same on an iphone and iPad. No, I'm stuck installing what Apple says I can install. How about the developers that have to give 30% of each purchase to Apple.
One person isn't saying both things.
One person doesn't have to be. Reality tells you via actual verifiable facts that iOS is not a monopoly, thus the GP's post is nonsense (or calls for a world where the government can force any business to sell something it doesn't want to).
That's what I thought... of course it won't stop big government from using it as an excuse to take a handful out of a deep pocket.
So what you're saying is that OS X and Linux are not viable competitors to Windows?
Oh, Windows isn't a monopoly. Gotcha.
So what's this all about again?
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You must be a hoot at parties.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
But most of the current uplifting is done through technological progress. And with us clearly exhausting the low hanging fruit of it, we're seeing a very clear decline for young people.
If you look at predictions, while those young people who are still employed are well off, we're looking at the first generation that will on average have a worse life in terms of financial security then their parents. That means that technological progress is no longer able to outperform the stress caused on the system by social change in the society.
So what you're saying is that OS X and Linux are not viable competitors to Windows?
Oh, Windows isn't a monopoly. Gotcha.
So what's this all about again?
That is exactly what I am saying, in terms of marketshare. OS X is currently at around 7% (but of new sales, makes up about 20%), and Linux is.... considerably below that. At the time of the court ruling, those numbers were further skewed towards Microsoft. Microsoft was found guilty by a court of abusing its monopoly position in the OS market, hence the subsequent restrictions placed on it.
It is absolutely not possible for Apple to be in that position since it never reached monopoly status in the smartphone market, hence the GP's Apple bash is just nonsensical. Even at the height of it's surging success, while everyone else was suddenly realising there was a market in it, they were simply displacing RIM.
The relative qualities of the OSes do not matter - merely that one of your choices is not in an effective monopoly position.
Socialism is not about taxing the rich and providing a security net. America, thank your stars, has never actually faced socialism. The golden period you describe was one of balance - between the rights of business owners and society at large. Your government wasn't over regulating in such a manner as to hamper business, nor was it the way it is now, entirely on the side of Wall Street.
If America was socialist, everything would've been nationalized. I can quote India as an example - the Congress party here ruled the country for about half a century, nationalized all the banks and notably Air India (which went from one of the best airlines in the 60s under its original owners, the Tata group, to the utter shambles it is in today) and you require a million licenses and permits to set up any sort of business.
The reforms of the 90s have been halted since the Congress returned to power in 2004, and they continue with idiotic taxpayer funded welfare programs. Tax payers are a minority here, and nobody ever raises the question of wasting taxpayer money on 'employment generation schemes' such as this.
Ironically despite sticking to socialism for so long, there's no equivalent of social security in India, nor, as in Europe, do we get to enjoy subsidized healthcare or education equally across society. The few government hospitals that exist are overstaffed, and government run schools prefer admitting children of govt. employees.
Robbing the electorally indifferent middle class to prop up welfare schemes for the masses of poor who actually vote - this has been the modus operandi since the country became independent.
The average middle class Indian has been screwed for so long s/he now accepts it as a part of life.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Funny way to twist words when you don't like their meaning.
You see, we have the same thing here in Scandinavian countries now, and we actually call things by their own names. But if you want to call decently implemented socialism "balance", whatever helps you look in the mirror and not see a hypocrite is a good thing I guess.
So how does a system that respects entrepreneurship still get to be labelled socialist?
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
You should perhaps ask the most wealthy, competitive, open and uncorrupt societies in the world? You know, ones that are openly socialist?