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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...
If said car manufacturer had a monopoly on cars and was attempting a monopoly on perfume then the EU would say yes.
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.
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.
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?
Does the EU have weapon of mass destruction by any chance?
Yes. Both the UK and France are part of the EU, and both have nuclear weapons.
Yes, but they both have launch control systems that run on Windows. MSFT wins again.
(That's supposed to be funny. Laugh you bastards.)
Does the EU have weapon of mass destruction by any chance?
Yes, they have Greece :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
One person isn't saying both things.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with it not being extrapolation.
Completely false. According to http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&symbol=NASDAQ%3AMSFT
Foreign Sales: $34,877mil
Domestic Sales: $38,846mil
Mass destruction, not cash destruction
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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.
User base.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.