Just ask yourself, why Chrome. What on earth would google do with their own browser? Just one thing and one thing only, try to FORCE all other browsers to increase their capabilities.
Except for the fact that Opera, Mozilla and Apple all did it before them. Opera released version 9.5, which was incredibly fast compared to everything else. The only thing Apple could do to catch up was to re-think the way JS was interpreted. Mozilla followed. Google was late in the game, and just did what everyone else was doing already.
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF, just wanted to let you know it's great to see someone dealing with the misconceptions and Microsoft FUD. I have replied to a lot of comments in these EU antitrust stories as well, and it seems that the Microsoft PR machine is winning over hearts and minds with their lies. It's important that someone sets the record straight. Since I don't have time to do a thorough round of debunking of MS myths this time around it's encouraging to see you around.
I swear IT folks have shorter memories than even the average American retard.
You talk about short memories, and yet you seem to have forgotten about Microsoft's business practices?
Firefox 2 and up is great. But that was only a few years back.
Exactly. It took a non-profit relying on donations and free labor to even make a dent in Microsoft's illegal grip on the market. If Microsoft hadn't broken the law, the browser market could have been much bigger by now, and the web much more mature.
At the end of the day I think we are moving away from the browser.
Actually, in case you didn't notice, we are moving towards the browser. Most applications people use today are used through the browser.
This is a just a futile effort by the EU.
A futile effort to enforce their own laws? Right. "The robberer will be dead in 30 years, so why bother throwing him in jail?"
People who hate MS like to attribute it to monopolistic practices, but that really wasn't it.
Actually, it was. Microsoft basically destroyed the browser market for many years. It took a non-profit relying on donations and free labor to put a dent in Microsoft's clamp-down on the browser market, and only after many years. If Microsoft hadn't destroyed the browser market, there could have been many more quality browsers around by now, and web technology could have moved much faster. And Microsoft had a conscious strategy to destroy the browser market, as US court documents show.
In the final analysis, the man is a successful business person who's earned his money, and can do with it as he pleases.
Actually, it turns out that he violated several laws, both in the US, EU, Korea and other places. He earned his money by breaking the law. Can he still do with it as he pleases?
Netscape destroyed Netscape, and Sun destroyed Java.
On the contrary, Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish strategy killed Java, and the browser market as well (not just Netscape, but a whole market).
The instant IE stopped sucking, people switched over in droves. (And as proof that OS bundling wasn't nearly as big a factor as Netscape claims: the exact same thing happened on Macintosh computers, even though Apple included *both* IE and Netscape on the system disk.)
IE for Mac was a completely different browser than the Windows version. It was actually somewhat standards compliant.
Microsoft made the stupid error of believing that Java was salvageable, so they added extensions to it to make it suck a little bit less at OS integration.
Actually, court documents revealed that Microsoft tried to destroy Java on purpose.
Everybody was up in arms over that situation. Even people within Microsoft thought it was a bad idea. The community at large made that change happen. If anything the EU was just another voice within thousands.
"this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue"
The only company to go under because of IE was Netscape. And Technicially it got bought out by AOL for 4.2 Billion.
How do you know that NS was the only company to go under? And you are ignoring the massive damage MS has done to the web as a whole, holding it back for multiple years.
All of that money is being made in the Mobile phone and Settop industry.
False. Mozilla Corporation is making lots of money from desktop browser. Opera's desktop browser makes up a quarter of their total revenues or so. But this is besides the point. The fact is that there is and was a browser market, and Microsoft has messed it up.
Honestly, this was one of Opera's smartest moves to ally with Nintendo. I don't see anyone buying browsers for any Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms, and if they are, they are making very little there.
So you are saying that Google isn't making money off of searches because the search service is free? Please.
Firefox share is the result of solid code coupled with a word of mouth advertising system and a languishing competitor. It also helps when just about every tech publication puts it as the top browser.
Again, Firefox is an anomaly. It took a non-profit organization which relied on donations and free work to even make a dent.
Mozilla wasn't ready, Opera had a niche market at best and Netscape 6 was Basicially AOL Lite with all of it's skinning and links all over the place. firefox 2 was the first real browser to overcome all of the shortcomings of IE and offer a stable expandable codebase to work against.
And why was that, you think? Because Microsoft destroyed the market, and it took a non-profit organization which relied on donations and free work to do anything.
Report to the US antitrust trial. Sun reported, Novell reported, Caldera (SCO) reported. Where was Opera? As soon as the EU starts doing an Antitrust trial, there they are.
Actually, it was Opera which got the EU case started by reporting
Getting a Guilty verdict here gives Opera (as well as anyone else for that matter) a stronger case in court to go civil suit, since they can use this case as a precedent.
This is pure garbage. Opera isn't doing this because it's planning to sue Microsoft.
THen who is right?
No browser stats are reliable. However, when it comes to reporting what you actually see in the market, StatCounter gets it more right than the rest.
First off, where are your numbers coming from? None of these Stat firms are right remember...
Around 3% is what you get if you look at the overall internet population compared to the number of Opera users on the desktop.
Second, If it's been free for over 3 years, I would think that it would have more share than Safari (althogh Apple Bundles it with OSX) or at least be much higher than chrome.
Opera does have a higher market share than both Safari and Chrome. And the fact that even Google has failed so far shows just how screwed up the market is. They have spent massive amounts of advertising money to push Chrome out there, and yet it hasn't even caught up with a small software company fr
There is. Several companies are making money from browsers, such as Mozilla Corporation, Access, Opera Software and Openwave.
Second, an OS without a browser is a laughable concept.
"A murderer without a knife is a laughable concept."
As a matter of fact, it has not been decided that IE needs to be removed. There are other possible remedies as well. But I guess facts don't matter when you do shilling for Microsoft.
Third, Microsoft included the browser long ago with the OS, applications depend on it. No IE means broken Windows applications.
Actually, you don't need IE. All you need is parts of IE.
Fourth, removing the browser from the OS does not help consumers. Sure, you can make some laughable argument that "competition helps consumers!" but the fact is this is an abstract, conceptual "good" which doesn't exist in this case. There are already plenty of high quality alternative free and commercial browsers.
Actually, competition does help consumers, and lack of competition does harm consumers. Many sites still require IE to work at all, and especially people browsing from non-PC devices are in trouble because the web is primarily designed for proprietary browser technologies.
Really all you can do to cheerlead this case is say "durr, me hate Microsoft! Me _real_ free market champion, because me think government should dictate product design! Me HATE MICROSOFT!".
The only people "hating" here are ignorant fools like yourself, who keep repeating the same fallacies over and over and over again, despite having the actual facts explained to you numerous times. Why do you keep repeating the same fallacies over and over again? I know I have lectured you on this in the past, and so have others.
The bottom line is that Microsoft broke the law. Microsoft shills like yourself will either try to deny the fact that Microsoft broke the law, or argue that Microsoft should be able to break the law without consequences. Both completely pathetic, ignorant and dishonest positions.
You present no argument as to why MS's activities were actually illegal. You just say they broke the law as if that must be true. Maybe you should present an argument before getting all high and mighty?
Or maybe you should educate yourself so that you won't have to ask these basic questions? But I guess that if you don't know by now, you don't want to know. Are you faking ignorance?
But let me explain: It is illegal to use your dominance in one market to destroy the competition in a different market. Microsoft used its dominant position in the OS market to destroy competition in the browser market.
Breaking antitrust law is never simple, because it's always contextual.
Well there's no lack of context here:)
Antitrust law makes illegal things which are generally legal for other parties. That's why it's generally considered a non-issue that Apple bundles Safari with OSX.
Indeed. Antitrust law makes things illegal for dominant players which are legal for others. And Microsoft is a dominant player. So again, it's a pretty clear-cut case.
Actually, even Net Applications reports it as being pretty steady.
As for holding people back, If your talking about Web Devs, IE8 makes great strides in compliency as well as allowing Legacy designs to run.
And yet the mess continues. For example, IE8 was originally going to default to the IE7 engine, and you had to opt in to the new "better standards" mode. Only after the EU got ivolved did Microsoft change to default to standards mode (and basically admitted that it was because of the EU antitrust case).
But they are not doing anything, and this is not a "silly" Comparasion as you like to call it. ITunes has already taken out multiple competitive services. Hell, Microsoft alone has already lost two fronts (playsforsure and URGE) and are most likely going to lose with Zune as well.
So? Can you show that this is because of anti-competitive behavior by Apple? If so, feel free to report them to the authorities. Although didn't they already look into it and conclude that Apple had not violated competition law?
It's done more damage to competitive products than even IE did to browsers.
Maybe it has done damange (irrelevant when discussing whether Microsoft is guilty or not), but it most definitely has not done more damage to the competition than IE.
What Open Competition? Everything is Free and the only competitive edge anymore is features and performance.
There are several companies out there making money from browsers, including the Mozilla Corporation, Access, and Opera Software. There was a browser market before Microsoft started messing up things, and there is one now, which suffers because of Microsoft's actions.
"When the only real competition comes from a not for profit open source organization that depends on volunteers for almost half of its work product and nearly all of its marketing and distribution, while more than half a dozen other "traditional" browser vendors with better than I.E. products have had near-zero success encroaching on Microsoft I.E.'s dominance, there's a demonstrable tilt to the playing field. That tilt comes with the distribution channel - default status for the OS bundled Web browser."
If you offer a better product then people will choose it.
Why didn't they choose it for all these years? IE6 kepts its dominance for several years despite better browsers being out there.
but didn't in the US antitrust trial, when the browser WAS the focus of that trial, and if they did, I never heard about it.
Didn't do what?
I guess they were too busy making Swedish Chef Translators instead of suing.
Again, Opera didn't sue Microsoft.
Because when you see a competitor down, you kick it. Did you See how fast Nvidia jumped on the Intel antitrust bandwangon with their ION platform as soon as the antitrust ruling came down? Thats what Corporations do.
We are discussing your claim that Opera sued Microsoft, which they didn't. Neither did Mozilla, Google or anyone else. They reported Microsoft's illegal actions to the EU and asked the EC to look into it.
Onestat.com if you don't like Net Applications
Sorry, but OneStat is useless as well.
Opera has been around for almost a decade, is available on two of the most popular game consoles today, and still has barely any share.
Actually, Opera has only been free of charge for 3
Probably just Opera's servers. But considering that Opera has been around for about 15 years and has an excellent privacy track record (and operates under some of the world's strictes privacy laws), Opera Mini is probably your last worry.
It's interesting, though, because I didn't notice this lag... Or maybe there was a lag and I adapted to it. It's been a while since I played, but I never really had problems with the spin thing as I can recall.
Browser market? What market? It's not like people go out and purchase IE, or Netscape, or Firefox.
And yet companies like the Mozilla Corporation, Access and Opera Software are making money from browsers. And companies were making money from browsers before IE as well. So there was a market before Microsoft's violations, and there is a market now. And Microsoft is using their dominant position in another market to undermine competition in the browser market, which is illegal.
They should be able to put what they want in their OS.
That's like saying "I should be able to stick my knife in whatever I want". That isn't how it works. I can stick my knife in this steak here, but it's illegal for me to stick my knife in someone else's body. You may not be aware of this but there is such a thing as "antitrust law". I suggest that you familiarize yourself with that.
Afterall...It's not like they are restricting other Browsers.
Actually, they were and they are. IE is full of proprietary and undocumented behavior which keeps other browser vendors chasing a moving target in order to try to be compatible so that they will work with all the sites out there that are coded specifically for Microsoft's proprietary platform. They were and are also hiding Windows APIs from other browser vendors, and are using Windows Update to push IE even when other browsers are set as the default browser.
Actually Microsoft's attitude towards IE has been rather commendable lately, what with the improved standards-compliance of IE8 and the fact that it can be easily uninstalled from a Windows 7 installation, leaving no trace of it behind.
And amazingly, all of it came after the antitrust case was raised. Funny that, isn't it? In fact, Microsoft implicitly stated that defaulting IE8 to standards mode (instead of defaulting to IE7 mode unless the site opts in) was to appaease the EU because of the antitrust case.
It is not a court. It is a hearing requested by Microsoft. In fact, in an amazing and rare moment of honest, Microsoft's blog specifically mentions that the hearing has no legal significance. It was just an opportunity for Microsoft to lobby EU personnel behind closed doors. I guess they got cold feet when they heard that Neelie Kroes was attending.
See, here's the problem most of the anti-MS people don't get....they're declaring Microsoft broke the law by bundling IE as if that were somehow a meaningful part of the discussion.
This isn't about "anti-MS", this is about the law. Bundling alone isn't against the law. Bundling with a dominant product to undermine competition in another market is illegal.
When someone robs a bank and is arrested and put on trial, is anyone who argues that the facts show him to be guilty "anti-that person"? Of course not. Stop being thick.
This isn't a case of an outright crime, like Microsoft breaking into Netscape's headquarters and beating up all their developers.
Actually, this is a case of an outright crime. If one can show that Microsoft used bundling with a dominant product to undermine competition in a different market, one has shown that Microsoft broke the law. And guess what, they have already been found to break the law in several countries, including the United States.
Some of us believe that the whole case against Microsoft was nothing more than a fraud upon the justice system
Nice try, Microsoft shill. What's your job at Microsoft? Microsoft has been convicted under competition law in several countries already. Only a Microsoft shill would claim innocence with a straight face. You are a disgusting liar, just like Microsoft in this story. Microsoft lied and claimed that they were being mistreated because they didn't get to tell the EU when to hold the hearing, when the fact is that none of Microsoft's arguments apply. Higher-ups never attend these hearings anyway. They are always attended by staff-level personell, and Microsoft knows it. So your employer is spewing out blatant lies again in an attempt to stall. I hope the EC cracks down on Microsoft for these blatant lies.
Nice try, Microsoft shill. Anyone who has been around for a few years knows that the document is factual. Only someone on Microsoft's payroll would claim otherwise.
No, I don't support $100K per song. However, it's easy to show how antitrust laws are useful and needed. Just look at how Microsoft fucked the market in the ass.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on. Just because there is a recession doesn't mean that laws are or should be ignored.
LOL. The US relies heavily on imported goods. Don't kid yourself, kid.
Except for the fact that Opera, Mozilla and Apple all did it before them. Opera released version 9.5, which was incredibly fast compared to everything else. The only thing Apple could do to catch up was to re-think the way JS was interpreted. Mozilla followed. Google was late in the game, and just did what everyone else was doing already.
How much do Microsoft pay you to shill for them?
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF, just wanted to let you know it's great to see someone dealing with the misconceptions and Microsoft FUD. I have replied to a lot of comments in these EU antitrust stories as well, and it seems that the Microsoft PR machine is winning over hearts and minds with their lies. It's important that someone sets the record straight. Since I don't have time to do a thorough round of debunking of MS myths this time around it's encouraging to see you around.
You talk about short memories, and yet you seem to have forgotten about Microsoft's business practices?
Exactly. It took a non-profit relying on donations and free labor to even make a dent in Microsoft's illegal grip on the market. If Microsoft hadn't broken the law, the browser market could have been much bigger by now, and the web much more mature.
Actually, in case you didn't notice, we are moving towards the browser. Most applications people use today are used through the browser.
A futile effort to enforce their own laws? Right. "The robberer will be dead in 30 years, so why bother throwing him in jail?"
Actually, it was. Microsoft basically destroyed the browser market for many years. It took a non-profit relying on donations and free labor to put a dent in Microsoft's clamp-down on the browser market, and only after many years. If Microsoft hadn't destroyed the browser market, there could have been many more quality browsers around by now, and web technology could have moved much faster. And Microsoft had a conscious strategy to destroy the browser market, as US court documents show.
You mean, "except for just about everything, you could do everything then that you could do now"?
Actually, it turns out that he violated several laws, both in the US, EU, Korea and other places. He earned his money by breaking the law. Can he still do with it as he pleases?
On the contrary, Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish strategy killed Java, and the browser market as well (not just Netscape, but a whole market).
IE for Mac was a completely different browser than the Windows version. It was actually somewhat standards compliant.
Actually, court documents revealed that Microsoft tried to destroy Java on purpose.
What motive did they have to destroy Netscape and Java?
No, it was the thing which MS change its mind:
"this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue"
How do you know that NS was the only company to go under? And you are ignoring the massive damage MS has done to the web as a whole, holding it back for multiple years.
False. Mozilla Corporation is making lots of money from desktop browser. Opera's desktop browser makes up a quarter of their total revenues or so. But this is besides the point. The fact is that there is and was a browser market, and Microsoft has messed it up.
So you are saying that Google isn't making money off of searches because the search service is free? Please.
Again, Firefox is an anomaly. It took a non-profit organization which relied on donations and free work to even make a dent.
And why was that, you think? Because Microsoft destroyed the market, and it took a non-profit organization which relied on donations and free work to do anything.
Actually, it was Opera which got the EU case started by reporting
This is pure garbage. Opera isn't doing this because it's planning to sue Microsoft.
No browser stats are reliable. However, when it comes to reporting what you actually see in the market, StatCounter gets it more right than the rest.
Around 3% is what you get if you look at the overall internet population compared to the number of Opera users on the desktop.
Opera does have a higher market share than both Safari and Chrome. And the fact that even Google has failed so far shows just how screwed up the market is. They have spent massive amounts of advertising money to push Chrome out there, and yet it hasn't even caught up with a small software company fr
There is. Several companies are making money from browsers, such as Mozilla Corporation, Access, Opera Software and Openwave.
"A murderer without a knife is a laughable concept."
As a matter of fact, it has not been decided that IE needs to be removed. There are other possible remedies as well. But I guess facts don't matter when you do shilling for Microsoft.
Actually, you don't need IE. All you need is parts of IE.
Actually, competition does help consumers, and lack of competition does harm consumers. Many sites still require IE to work at all, and especially people browsing from non-PC devices are in trouble because the web is primarily designed for proprietary browser technologies.
The only people "hating" here are ignorant fools like yourself, who keep repeating the same fallacies over and over and over again, despite having the actual facts explained to you numerous times. Why do you keep repeating the same fallacies over and over again? I know I have lectured you on this in the past, and so have others.
The bottom line is that Microsoft broke the law. Microsoft shills like yourself will either try to deny the fact that Microsoft broke the law, or argue that Microsoft should be able to break the law without consequences. Both completely pathetic, ignorant and dishonest positions.
Or maybe you should educate yourself so that you won't have to ask these basic questions? But I guess that if you don't know by now, you don't want to know. Are you faking ignorance?
But let me explain: It is illegal to use your dominance in one market to destroy the competition in a different market. Microsoft used its dominant position in the OS market to destroy competition in the browser market.
Well there's no lack of context here :)
Indeed. Antitrust law makes things illegal for dominant players which are legal for others. And Microsoft is a dominant player. So again, it's a pretty clear-cut case.
Actually, even Net Applications reports it as being pretty steady.
And yet the mess continues. For example, IE8 was originally going to default to the IE7 engine, and you had to opt in to the new "better standards" mode. Only after the EU got ivolved did Microsoft change to default to standards mode (and basically admitted that it was because of the EU antitrust case).
So? Can you show that this is because of anti-competitive behavior by Apple? If so, feel free to report them to the authorities. Although didn't they already look into it and conclude that Apple had not violated competition law?
Maybe it has done damange (irrelevant when discussing whether Microsoft is guilty or not), but it most definitely has not done more damage to the competition than IE.
There are several companies out there making money from browsers, including the Mozilla Corporation, Access, and Opera Software. There was a browser market before Microsoft started messing up things, and there is one now, which suffers because of Microsoft's actions.
Firefox is an anomaly, as Mozilla puts it:
"When the only real competition comes from a not for profit open source organization that depends on volunteers for almost half of its work product and nearly all of its marketing and distribution, while more than half a dozen other "traditional" browser vendors with better than I.E. products have had near-zero success encroaching on Microsoft I.E.'s dominance, there's a demonstrable tilt to the playing field. That tilt comes with the distribution channel - default status for the OS bundled Web browser."
Why didn't they choose it for all these years? IE6 kepts its dominance for several years despite better browsers being out there.
Didn't do what?
Again, Opera didn't sue Microsoft.
We are discussing your claim that Opera sued Microsoft, which they didn't. Neither did Mozilla, Google or anyone else. They reported Microsoft's illegal actions to the EU and asked the EC to look into it.
Sorry, but OneStat is useless as well.
Actually, Opera has only been free of charge for 3
Probably just Opera's servers. But considering that Opera has been around for about 15 years and has an excellent privacy track record (and operates under some of the world's strictes privacy laws), Opera Mini is probably your last worry.
It's interesting, though, because I didn't notice this lag... Or maybe there was a lag and I adapted to it. It's been a while since I played, but I never really had problems with the spin thing as I can recall.
And yet companies like the Mozilla Corporation, Access and Opera Software are making money from browsers. And companies were making money from browsers before IE as well. So there was a market before Microsoft's violations, and there is a market now. And Microsoft is using their dominant position in another market to undermine competition in the browser market, which is illegal.
That's like saying "I should be able to stick my knife in whatever I want". That isn't how it works. I can stick my knife in this steak here, but it's illegal for me to stick my knife in someone else's body. You may not be aware of this but there is such a thing as "antitrust law". I suggest that you familiarize yourself with that.
Actually, they were and they are. IE is full of proprietary and undocumented behavior which keeps other browser vendors chasing a moving target in order to try to be compatible so that they will work with all the sites out there that are coded specifically for Microsoft's proprietary platform. They were and are also hiding Windows APIs from other browser vendors, and are using Windows Update to push IE even when other browsers are set as the default browser.
Maybe you can't, but if this prevented Microsoft from destroying PDF, that sounds like a good thing to me.
And amazingly, all of it came after the antitrust case was raised. Funny that, isn't it? In fact, Microsoft implicitly stated that defaulting IE8 to standards mode (instead of defaulting to IE7 mode unless the site opts in) was to appaease the EU because of the antitrust case.
Why do you constantly lie in favor of Microsoft?
This isn't about "anti-MS", this is about the law. Bundling alone isn't against the law. Bundling with a dominant product to undermine competition in another market is illegal.
When someone robs a bank and is arrested and put on trial, is anyone who argues that the facts show him to be guilty "anti-that person"? Of course not. Stop being thick.
Actually, this is a case of an outright crime. If one can show that Microsoft used bundling with a dominant product to undermine competition in a different market, one has shown that Microsoft broke the law. And guess what, they have already been found to break the law in several countries, including the United States.
Nice try, Microsoft shill. What's your job at Microsoft? Microsoft has been convicted under competition law in several countries already. Only a Microsoft shill would claim innocence with a straight face. You are a disgusting liar, just like Microsoft in this story. Microsoft lied and claimed that they were being mistreated because they didn't get to tell the EU when to hold the hearing, when the fact is that none of Microsoft's arguments apply. Higher-ups never attend these hearings anyway. They are always attended by staff-level personell, and Microsoft knows it. So your employer is spewing out blatant lies again in an attempt to stall. I hope the EC cracks down on Microsoft for these blatant lies.
Nice try, Microsoft shill. Anyone who has been around for a few years knows that the document is factual. Only someone on Microsoft's payroll would claim otherwise.
No, I don't support $100K per song. However, it's easy to show how antitrust laws are useful and needed. Just look at how Microsoft fucked the market in the ass.