The problem here is that the laws fail to account for the pace at which the world changes (and thats true for a LOT of laws that involve technology...).,
Normally that is true, but not so much for Web browsers. They're still reading pages using the same partially implemented versions of standards written a decade ago. CSS, XHTML, SVG all have to use really really antiquated versions because one monopolist has refused to implement newer versions of these standards. In a free market, any browser which refused to move forward would lose market share and fall into insignificance. In a monopolized market is just holds back the entire industry.
Today though, browsers ARE part of a standard operating system install.
So what, because MS dominated the market criminally long ago, we should ignore it? Why not just order them to make the web engine a modular plug-in and make both that and the application the choice of OEMs? Or include multiple versions and let the user decide which to use. Either way should start to force MS to start moving forward with standards again or lose market.
Even fucking cellphones are "bundled" with a browser. So yes, there was a pre-existing market, but browsers would be bundled with pretty much all functional internet enabled devices with a screen by now regardless, so Microsoft needs to bundle a browser to have a real product.
Microsoft makes a component. An OS is useless without hardware and applications and OEMs already put together bundles for consumers. There is no reason that because MS has complete control over one component they should be able to destroy competition in another. Computers and cell phones are both pretty useless without displays too. If MS started bundling displays with their OS and forced all computer makers to buy a display with every copy of windows would you think we should let them do that too?
The market changed.
Not in any way that is material to the antitrust abuse. There is still a market for other browsers and MS is still leveraging their monopoly to break competition and the Web itself.
Doesn't change that its totally stupid.
So what do you suggest? We let them continue to keep the Web from ever moving forward while ruining the business of other companies? We just ignore the law?
Oh, and go ahead and make them bundle Firefox. Then the market for the company that made the recent complain (Opera) will die an even faster death.
First, that's not likely as they will probably require Opera and Safari to be bundled if they require Firefox. Second, I disagree that bundling Firefox would hurt Opera. It would be a huge boon for Web standards and allow Opera to save tons of money by no longer having to reverse engineer IE's intentionally broken quirks. It would let users know they have choices. It would encourage standards which would remove the main barrier for Opera to market to large organizations and businesses. It would allow for real innovation again allowing Opera to compete by creating new features.
There's a reason to consider a standard compliant browser if you have an inferior product installed. But if you have a perfectly acceptable one bundled... the reasons to go out of your way and look at alternatives are....minimal....
Right now there isn't a lot of reason because there's not a lot of feature differentiation. If, however, the Web moved to standards there is a lot of room for niche browsers and browsers with cool features like grammar checking or gesture input. I don't like Opera myself because it sucks on my main platform, but it is a really good competitor on some other platforms. If you break MS's stranglehold it offers them a free market where they can sink or swim but at least they have an opportunity.
How is this situation different than what exists right now without bundles? Firefox has achieved ~10% adoption rate at the expense of IE without any bundles (unless you want to count Linux distributions).
Because most people don't know what a browser is or that they have a choice and most people operate under the assumption that the free market is working... if there were better browsers their OE would have installed one. Since the free market is not working, that misleads them. !0% market share of 30% for Firefox does not matter. IE is by almost all metrics objectively the worst of all the browsers but it has 70% or more of the market. This is because of the abuse primarily bundling.
Bundling is an advantage as it equals guaranteed distribution but word of mouth doesn't require bundling.
I don't understand what the point you're trying to make is.
If all the EU is interested in is making a quick ruling and then patting themselves on the back for a job well done then they are wasting resources on pointless theatrics.
History has shown when you're facing a criminal with really deep pockets and a history of very large campaign contributions, it's usually a lot more effective to remove their ability to commit a crime rather than try to count on the law to watch them all the time.
How difficult would it really be? If the Slashdot crowd hears about MS shenanigans then it's not exactly a big secret and one government official should be able to confirm or deny the reports. When it comes to bribery; not much can be done about that.
It can be intensely complex since there are dozens if not hundreds of Web standards. Do we have to go to court over and over and over again to prove MS's noncompliance? They've been relying on the slowness of the courts in order to abuse the system for years and years before anyone even tries to stop them. As for bribery, yes you can do a lot, don't give them an opening. Restore the market and you don't have to micromanage.
Once all the incompatible sites are universally broken then you've essentially restored balance and Microsoft would then have to convince web developers to ignore Firefox, Safari, the mobile browsers based on Webkit and Opera, etc.. to pick the proprietary Micrsoft technologies again.
Yup, but MS is an expert at it and has done it over and over again in many markets. It's how they make their money, by embracing, extending and extinguishing standards. All they have to do is leverage Windows and build technologies into it directly or require proprietary technologies for development on Windows and then push them into their browser.
I don't think it'll be an issue this time around since the market is a different place than it was in the 90s.
Yeah, MS has more markets with monopoly influence to abuse than they did then.
In MS's position, they are selling a ready to go for most peoples use OS.
Sure they do, but that makes up an insignificant part of their market. MS's real market is to OEMs who then use it as one component of the computers systems they sell. The vast majority of people never install an OS. This is about MS having a monopoly one component of computer systems and forcing OEMs to buy a whole pile of applications as well, partly as a way to keep the Web too crippled to allow for good, portable applications.
If you want to compete in a market, you have to actually do something...
Considering Opera does very well at selling their browser to phone manufacturers, maybe it is the fact that the market is broken more than their ineptitude preventing them from being successful on OEM computer systems? We'll never know unless the market is leveled and they're given a fair chance to compete.
Besides bundling IE, what has MS done to block Opera on the desktop? We aren't talking Java here, or various other tech's that MS crippled from working.
It's funny you mention Java. MS made an incompatible version and bundled it in an attempt to keep Java crippled so it could not allow for easy cross platform apps. MS made a Web browser that was incompatible with the standards and crippled it by only using really old and broken specs so it could not allow for easy cross platform apps. I'm not really seeing lot of difference.
Bottom line, I don't want all the excess bundle...
Okay, duly noted. That said if it comes down to the Web remaining crippled for another decade or having to uninstall a few browsers when I do a fresh Windows install, I'm going with the latter and if that inconveniences you, consider the many, many hours Web developers and myself have wasted making Web pages because of MS's crime.
..there is nothing to get amazed. KDE, Gnome any other distro that bundles a single browser to their product will probably be asked to bundle more.
Why would they be asked to? They're not undermining any competition.
antitrust laws are not fair. they are not supposed to be fair. they should not be fair. they are equalizing moves that are used to whack down on the biggest shareholder in a market if they do anything wrong, illegal, or unethical.
What do you mean? Antitrust laws apply equally to everyone. They're not about "whacking down" anyone. They're about making sure companies with a lot of power don't abuse that power to undermine the free, capitalist market. Antitrust abuses are where trusts (companies or cartels) use their overwhelming power in one market to undermine a second market and provide artificial incentives for inferior products to succeed instead of letting competition decide.
Gaining monopoly influence is a lot like buying a gun. When you have one, you're responsible for your actions with it and while people who don't have them can go into bars and get trashed, when you do so with a gun you're putting everyone at risk and are likely to get busted if you're in the worng jurisdiction and anyone notices.
I think the EU needs to go back to determine if Microsoft still has a monopoly.
Legally, there is no question. They have monopolistic influence by a huge margin.
Microsoft no longer has all that much control even on it's own platform, much less all desktop PCs, given Mac's rapidly increasing market share.
You have fundamentally misunderstood the market. OS X's market share is irrelevant unless Apple starts licensing it to OEMs or offering large site licenses on generic hardware. If Dell (and other OEM customers) can't license OS X to put on the systems they ship, it is not in the market and does not matter to MS's influence.
Furthermore, if monopolies are characterized by a lack of competition for a good or service, then why is there a huge rise in the popularity of different web browsers.
Again, you've fundamentally misunderstood the second market involved. MS can have 5% of the browser market and it doesn't make a difference to this case. MS is being accused of using their monopoly on desktop OS's to skew the Web browser market. It doesn't matter if they have monopoly influence in the Web browser market or not.
Microsoft has lost desktop PC marketshare, lost broswer share, lost laptop share. If they held a monopoly in the 90s, it's clear to me they no longer do.
You seem a bit confused as to what the term "monopoly" means in the legal sense and to economists. You also seem a bit confused about what markets are involved and how their actions in tying those markets constitute antitrust abuse.
And if you ask most folks in the Valley now, they don't fear Microsoft anymore either.
Ask MS's customers how much influence MS has. They are the measure. Can the CEO Dell or HP tell MS to go take a flying leap and not be fired? I thought not.
and we should care why? Monopoly schnopoly. Doesn't friggin matter.
Free market competition leads to better products. Antitrust abuse undermines free markets and leads to worse products and waste, sort of like why socialism resulted in really crappy products. If you don't lose market share or money for making crap, why make better stuff? Worse yet, MS makes money by making IE intentionally bad because it keeps the Web crippled and nonfunctional enough people can't just use the Web on some other OS.
It doesn't matter if you like using the Web that still relies upon partially implemented version of decade old technologies because one monopolist refuses to fix their browser to use any new technologies that might make the Web too useful and hurt their OS sales.
Seriously EU, give it up, you've beaten this horse to death.
Yeah, just because the criminal is still committing the crime in no way undermines your authority. Why not quit now and let them continue to break the law?
Since all the browsers are free, how is anybody really gaining anything, competition wise?
Other Web browser makers have to spend millions on reverse engineering the way MS is intentionally broken because of the crime. Are you going to reimburse them? The Web itself is broken and prevented from moving forward so Web apps don't become viable options and allow people to move to platform independent solutions and later move to whatever OS they want. Nobody cares if innovation on the Web is crippled though, after all MS is making money.
Not to mention, the sheeple who don't know enough to go to the Firefox/Opera/etc website to get the browser themselves are just going to choose IE if the installer asks them a question anyways.
Some will, if the installer gives them a choice instead of just installing all of them. Either way it helps all of the above.
The decision would have been better placed to force MS to improce ie with a legally binding schedule agreed by apple, mozilla, microsoft and opera as to where browsers should ALL be in a years time.
So you're thinking a central committee should plan Web browser development and decide how much innovation should occur? I'm pretty sure that model failed spectacularly in the past compared to a fair, free market competition among companies to produce the best. Why not just restore the free market and let capitalism handle it like we do everything else?
I fail to see how forcing the bundling of a different browser(s) solves the problem....If they have no idea they'll just be irked and pick the first one on the list.
It doesn't completely solve the problem, but it helps. If users have to pick a browser they will talk about it and some will like a browser and others will like other browsers and they will do this thing Microsoft hates called "compete". Eventually different browsers will develop different reputations based upon which ones best satisfy users and those are the browsers that will be the most popular. This is a very, very good thing for the advancement of the Web and Web browsers. It rewards making a good product and encourages good products and makes the makers answerable for their own success.
The solution, IMO, would seem to be forcing Microsoft to ditch the "compatibility mode" in IE and stick to the standards so that new IE is as broken on sites coded to work with previous versions of IE as any other browser. Then, prohibit them from making any further "extensions" to the specs which caused the problem to begin with.
Here's the problem with that. It requires constant vigilance and work on the part of the EU. Who tests IE's compliance? Will those people be bribed? Will they become lax after a few years allowing MS to go back to business as usual? How much time and effort needs to be put in to sustain this forever? It is fine in the short term, but does not solve the problem in the long term.
What next? Force microsoft to unbundle the file explorer?
Why do you ask in a forum instead of just looking up what the law says? Was their a separate, pre-existing market when MS bundled the application into Windows? If yes, it is an antitrust abuse. If no, it is not. This isn't rocket science.
Agnostic enough to see that the brouhaha over web browser choice is just muscle flexing, and truly unhelpful in the long run.
Yeah, Odin forbid we have competition among Web browsers such that crappy browsers that still can't use standards completed a decade ago are not the most popular one in use resulting in the entire Web being frozen suing ancient technologies. That would be terrible to have (gasp) progress! It sure would suck if the majority of Web users could use vector graphics and audio and video without plug-ins and portable XML and had offline databases for using Web apps when the Web was unavailable. Golly that sure would be unhelpful.
I believe he's referring to the tying of the itunes software service, Apple's "FairPlay" DRM, and the iPod. Fairly clear-cut if you're a new-age "trust buster" who thinks everything is a monopoly, no?
Umm, yeah if enforcing laws written in the US at the start of World War I is considered "new-age". That crazy young hippy president Woodrow Wilson and his crystals!
mean, people _really like_ Apple and have decided to make the iPod the defacto DAP, so it's a monopoly even with countless ("not iPod though!") alternatives, no?
The number of alternatives doesn't matter, just how much influence they have on the market. 100 products with a combined market share of 1% does little to lessen the power of the company with 99%. You also seem confused in your implication that trusts are illegal. They are not. Just leveraging them into new markets is. There is nothing wrong with Apple gaining 99% of the portable music player market if they make a really good iPod. What is detrimental to society and illegal is Apple gaining huge portions of other markets because they make a great iPod and tie it. They need to win each market with the best product, jukebox software, online music services, and portable digital music players.
Maybe I'm just an idiot that needs to have this explained to me, but what is the significant difference between Microsoft bundling IE with Windows and Apple bundling Safari with OSX.
Antitrust law says you can't tie a monopolized product in one market to a product in a separate, pre-existing market. Doing so undermines fair competition in the second market. The same law applies to everyone.
Windows is a monopoly in the desktop OS market and this has been clearly determined by the courts and MS has been convicted of abuses before. IE is a separate product for which there was an existing market before they tied it (via bundling the most common form of tying and the first example in case law) to Windows.
Neither OS X or Safari constitutes a monopoly in any market so a law banning tying of a monopolized market with something else does not undermine either market and is not illegal in any way. Apple's iPod may or may not constitute monopoly influence on the portable digital music player market and if they decide it does Apple will have to stop tying iTunes and the ITunes music store to iPods.
Along the same lines, why has EU convicted them for the bundling of their media player with Windows, but not brought the same actions against Apple for bundling iTunes with OSX.
For this to be true Apple has to have a monopoly on desktop OS's or on jukebox software applications. Do you think they have a monopoly on either?
The only difference I can see is that Microsoft holds a larger market share, so they apparently have to play by different rules.
You could say that, but it is imprecise and misleading. An analogy is it would be saying "in order to comply with murder laws some people (who have guns pointed at other people) have to play by different rules when firing pistols." Firing pistols is legal in general and so is bundling products. Murder is illegal and so is undermining other markets using a monopolized market. Firing a pistol is one way someone can commit a murder and tying a monopolized and not monopolized product is one way people can undermine markets illegally.
MS in NO WAY stops Mozilla, or Apple, or anyone else, from loading their browser onto Windows. Anyone can go and load up any browser they damn well feel like.
Who said they couldn't?
Ergo, MS is not using their position to harm anyones ability to sell (or give away) browsers.
This is a non sequitur. By that argument bundling is never antitrust abuse and since it is the most common form of antitrust abuse, I'm telling you your cranium is full of rabbit crap. Just because you don't literally force people to do something doesn't mean you haven't undermined the free market to make a poorly made product artificially the best choice.
Seriously, answer my previous questions about your schooling so I can help prevent educational disasters like you from recurring and then go pick up a freaking econ book and find out what antitrust abuse is, in particular tying and bundling.
As a web developer, all I want is for MS to make IE compatible with standards. I'm sick of giving their browser special treatment, and I wouldn't if it didn't represent over 50% of my users.
If IE had 5% of the market would you care if it was not standards compliant? If it had 5% couldn't you just tell users to upgrade to any standards compliant browser? The root of why the incompatibility matters is market share and that share comes from bundling. Break the bundling and take corrective actions to fix the Web and it won't matter if IE is compliant. The main issue is fixing the Web so it is compliant and it could be that forcing IE into compliance is the easiest fix, but unless they are constantly going to be watchdogged and those watching cannot be corrupted or bribed, forcing IE to be compliant is not a good long term solution by itself. Removing their bundling removes their ability to break the Web all over again when scrutiny becomes more lax.
I think MS consciously chooses to keep IE incompatible with the standards so that sites developed for IE don't work in other browsers that are standards compliant. It's a monopolistic abuse of power.
The internal memos discovered in their US case more or less proved that was their strategy.
I am normally not the one to defend Microsoft, as I think the company, their business practices and almost all of their products suck bad. But I think shipping Windows without a default web browser, or to force Microsoft to bundle in Firefox, Safari or some other browser is problematic and actually unfair.
Is it fair to lock someone in a cage for years restricting their free movement and making them lose their job in the process? What if they are a repeat offender criminal who shows no inclination to stop their crimes and has just been convicted of robbing another liquor store?
This is a punishment for a crime and is designed to help the victims. If anything it is way too lenient.
Ok, I hate Internet Explorer probably more than anyone else in the universe, and would love to see it exorcised from windows... but this is going overboard.
I disagree.
It should be OEMs that choose to install Firefox or another browser. Forcing them to install all other browsers is just as bad as MS forcing them to always install IE with windows.
If this trial were taking place in 1995 I'd agree with you, but it is much to late for such a solution. If OEMs are allowed to choose today, they have an interest in picking the browser that works with all the pages that are broken such that they only work with IE. Those pages exist because of MS's deliberate campaign to create them and break the Web to stop competition. So allowing OEMs to choose alone is not sufficient to restore the market to competitiveness. The issue of all those broken pages and broken standards needs to be solved as well or it will still result in IE having a larger share of the market and more influence on the market than is provided by the honest merits of their work.
Besides, perhaps I want a computer with *NO* web browser! (there are plenty of cases where a computer would be used for a specific purpose that doesn't involve web access)
This is an extreme edge case and not where the EU should be focusing. You can do a little more work and remove the browsers.
Now, in all fairness, there is a good likelihood that OEMs are still quietly being pressured by MS to not install other browsers or even other non-MS software. If that is the case then this core issue needs to be addressed first.
The broken market is pressuring OEMs even if MS sits back and does nothing new. The fewer browsers they install the lower their support costs. The one browser they are unlikely to get complaints about and that requires the least training right now is IE. The one browser that can work with many broken pages is IE, because they were designed specifically to work with IE and nothing else.
At most, perhaps OEMs should get some incentive to install Firefox/Opera, but should not be required.
The best solutions are not an option right now. MS should be broken up into multiple companies, but it isn't going to happen anytime soon. More importantly the Web needs to be fixed and allowed to move forward. Maybe this is best done by requiring OEMs to install multiple browsers or maybe by forcing MS to adhere to modern standards as determined by independent bodies, but stopping the bundling without undoing the damage will get us nowhere fast.
Seriously... should we next force Coke to include a can of Pepsi in every 6-pack?
Why, is Coca-Cola a monopolist in one market and using their position to harm Pepsi's ability to sell cola?
I really wish you idiots would read a fricking book or wikipedia or at least educate yourself to have a clue what you're talking about before spouting off this nonsensical crap. Do you have a four year degree? If so please tell me where it is from so I can send them a note about why econ101 is usually required and that if they have such a requirement they need textbook printed in the last 100 years.
Wait, I actually like MS's calculator program for its simplicity. Why do you get the right to tell me what I am supposed to prefer?
How am I telling you what you should prefer? How am I telling you what you should use? I'm just telling you that Microsoft has no right to decide what OEMs bundle with computers they sell. If you aren't trolling, you're confused.
Oh, I forgot--you're left-leaning politically. Heh.
Actually I'm a moderate conservative, which makes me seem fairly left to people from the US. That has nothing to do with this, however, as these laws have been in existence since about the time the democratic-republican party split in two and started to drift towards different ends of the spectrum.
This "free market forces are failing because X is not the best product on the market" is a red herring.
Actually, the argument is that the free market is failing because we don't know if the best product is being chosen because it is never given the chance. The whole point of antitrust law is to stop monopolies from undermining competition in the free market, like MS is. If you don't understand that or believe it, fine, but argue why you think the antitrust law in general is wrong, because MS has clearly broken it and the laws are almost identical in the US, EU, and most other industrialized nations. You've got hundreds of years of economics to debunk.
Great. So why waste all the energy on Microsoft including a (mandatory, in this day and age) browser integrated in the OS that is already being used less and less by people.
Because the Web is still broken and a decade behind where it would be if every copy of IE turned into any other major browser tomorrow. Because MS documents admitted their intention was to cripple the Web and keep it from being too useful. Because this is a solvable problem and because it is better than waiting another decade and hoping charitable organizations manage to solve the problem while the criminal goes unpunished.
I find it interesting how people play so fast and loose with words here, saying things like "true competition" when Linux, FreeBSD, and a few others ARE true competition to Windows.
Sure they are, but not valid competitors such that they have any real market influence. The CEO of Dell can decide to ship his machines with Linux, but he'll also get fired the next week. His other option is to capitulate to MS's demands and when those demands effect other markets, MS is potentially breaking the law.
The reason more people are adopting Firefox and not Linux itself is one of, again, consumer education and the difficulty of switching.
MS's stranglehold on Web browsers is less than that of OS's, but that doesn't matter. Even if MS only had 5% of the browser market, bundling IE would still undermine that market and break the law.
Hence, a lot of slashdotters, probably not being entirely honest with themselves in regards to their motivations, want to handicap Windows to benefit Linux.
Stopping the bundling of IE doesn't hamper Windows, except in making it harder for them to cripple other technologies. The only ways in which IE benefits adoption of windows are illegal ways. MS crippling the Web so that people can't have portable Web applications that let them choose other OS's is a crime and if you can't see why crippling an entire field of technology is bad for consumers you've been drinking way too much kool-aid.
The solution would be to split Microsoft up into separate companies so you didn't have the guys with 90% of the operating system market also producing applications - but that isn't within the EU's power.
Technically, it is within their power, but they won't order it because of diplomatic reasons. I'd also argue a much better way to split up MS is not into applications and OS, but into multiple companies each with full rights to the Windows OS and forbid them from collaboration. It would much more effectively kill MS's ability to leverage their monopoly and spur innovation. "What you don't want to sell us a stripped down version of XP for netbooks, fine we'll see if the other Windows seller is interested in this lucrative business deal."
Quite true and insightful. Who _cares_ what the default browser is. If it's Firefox, then Firefox will have an "unfair advantage".
Yup, but that's still better than now because Mozilla does not have a vested interest in keeping the Web broken and crippled and does not already have a monopoly and are not a repeatedly convicted criminal. Internal documents did not reveal they had a plan to cripple the entire Web to keep it from threatening their other products. Firefox does a reasonable job of adhering to standards including implementing technologies MS has more or less completely left out of IE resulting in vector graphics and portable XML being unusable on the Web.
Can you list some of these good books that you have read?
Off the top of my head there was The Great Depression by Robert McElvaine. There was also something by Noam Chomsky that covered it well and some bestseller I picked up with a title including "blinders" although the title eludes my recall and a quick Google search.
Of course new versions of Windows will come with newer versions of IE anyways, and IE8 is approaching "reasonably standards compliant" to some degree, so the argument of standards is kind of specious.
Bullshit. They aren't even close to any other major browser let alone the cutting edge ones. Take a look at the my response to the last commenter to this to see specific dates and standards.
Firefox isn't standards compliant either, and it's getting to the point where choosing browsers means choosing between different non-standards compliance.
No browser is 100% standards compliant, but all the other ones are so much further along than IE that your equivocation is laughable. Beside that, they don't have to be standards complaint because the Web itself is not. It is broken because the one browser that most people use, which ships with Windows is so broken there is little point in using newer technologies. Who spends money making Web pages only 30% of users can use? By forcing IE to standards compliance or forcing it out of the position of being the only one bundled you restore competition so if IE doesn't work, users still have something that does. This motivates browser developers to move forward with new technologies and Web page developers to use them. That's the point.
Opera has never spent a lot of time trying to be compatible with IE anyways.
Yeah they've only wasted millions on it instead of hundreds of millions. You just admitted, I might mention, that one of their major problems is lack of compatibility with broken pages MS memos reveal they intentionally set out to make broken to prevent people from being able to compete. That's a crime.
Except that things are already changing; FF has been gaining marketshare, and the web is becoming more and more compliant.
FF is only gaining share slowly and only then by having so much better of a feature set as to be completely overwhelming. Other browser which are still better than IE are not gaining share, only because of IE's advantage of being bundled, which undermines their profits. As for standards compliance, XHTML was a completed W3C recommended standard in 2001. It is 2009 and MS fails entirely to have a usable implementation. The first version of SVG was recommended in 2001 as well. CSS 2 was 1998. You may claim that the Web is moving towards more standards but MS has managed to cripple the Web and keep pages a decade behind where they would be if IE simply did not exist. Moving glacially towards completing eight year old standards is not sufficient for innovation in a high tech industry.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem here is that the laws fail to account for the pace at which the world changes (and thats true for a LOT of laws that involve technology...).,
Normally that is true, but not so much for Web browsers. They're still reading pages using the same partially implemented versions of standards written a decade ago. CSS, XHTML, SVG all have to use really really antiquated versions because one monopolist has refused to implement newer versions of these standards. In a free market, any browser which refused to move forward would lose market share and fall into insignificance. In a monopolized market is just holds back the entire industry.
Today though, browsers ARE part of a standard operating system install.
So what, because MS dominated the market criminally long ago, we should ignore it? Why not just order them to make the web engine a modular plug-in and make both that and the application the choice of OEMs? Or include multiple versions and let the user decide which to use. Either way should start to force MS to start moving forward with standards again or lose market.
Even fucking cellphones are "bundled" with a browser. So yes, there was a pre-existing market, but browsers would be bundled with pretty much all functional internet enabled devices with a screen by now regardless, so Microsoft needs to bundle a browser to have a real product.
Microsoft makes a component. An OS is useless without hardware and applications and OEMs already put together bundles for consumers. There is no reason that because MS has complete control over one component they should be able to destroy competition in another. Computers and cell phones are both pretty useless without displays too. If MS started bundling displays with their OS and forced all computer makers to buy a display with every copy of windows would you think we should let them do that too?
The market changed.
Not in any way that is material to the antitrust abuse. There is still a market for other browsers and MS is still leveraging their monopoly to break competition and the Web itself.
Doesn't change that its totally stupid.
So what do you suggest? We let them continue to keep the Web from ever moving forward while ruining the business of other companies? We just ignore the law?
Oh, and go ahead and make them bundle Firefox. Then the market for the company that made the recent complain (Opera) will die an even faster death.
First, that's not likely as they will probably require Opera and Safari to be bundled if they require Firefox. Second, I disagree that bundling Firefox would hurt Opera. It would be a huge boon for Web standards and allow Opera to save tons of money by no longer having to reverse engineer IE's intentionally broken quirks. It would let users know they have choices. It would encourage standards which would remove the main barrier for Opera to market to large organizations and businesses. It would allow for real innovation again allowing Opera to compete by creating new features.
There's a reason to consider a standard compliant browser if you have an inferior product installed. But if you have a perfectly acceptable one bundled... the reasons to go out of your way and look at alternatives are....minimal....
Right now there isn't a lot of reason because there's not a lot of feature differentiation. If, however, the Web moved to standards there is a lot of room for niche browsers and browsers with cool features like grammar checking or gesture input. I don't like Opera myself because it sucks on my main platform, but it is a really good competitor on some other platforms. If you break MS's stranglehold it offers them a free market where they can sink or swim but at least they have an opportunity.
How is this situation different than what exists right now without bundles? Firefox has achieved ~10% adoption rate at the expense of IE without any bundles (unless you want to count Linux distributions).
Because most people don't know what a browser is or that they have a choice and most people operate under the assumption that the free market is working... if there were better browsers their OE would have installed one. Since the free market is not working, that misleads them. !0% market share of 30% for Firefox does not matter. IE is by almost all metrics objectively the worst of all the browsers but it has 70% or more of the market. This is because of the abuse primarily bundling.
Bundling is an advantage as it equals guaranteed distribution but word of mouth doesn't require bundling.
I don't understand what the point you're trying to make is.
If all the EU is interested in is making a quick ruling and then patting themselves on the back for a job well done then they are wasting resources on pointless theatrics.
History has shown when you're facing a criminal with really deep pockets and a history of very large campaign contributions, it's usually a lot more effective to remove their ability to commit a crime rather than try to count on the law to watch them all the time.
How difficult would it really be? If the Slashdot crowd hears about MS shenanigans then it's not exactly a big secret and one government official should be able to confirm or deny the reports. When it comes to bribery; not much can be done about that.
It can be intensely complex since there are dozens if not hundreds of Web standards. Do we have to go to court over and over and over again to prove MS's noncompliance? They've been relying on the slowness of the courts in order to abuse the system for years and years before anyone even tries to stop them. As for bribery, yes you can do a lot, don't give them an opening. Restore the market and you don't have to micromanage.
Once all the incompatible sites are universally broken then you've essentially restored balance and Microsoft would then have to convince web developers to ignore Firefox, Safari, the mobile browsers based on Webkit and Opera, etc.. to pick the proprietary Micrsoft technologies again.
Yup, but MS is an expert at it and has done it over and over again in many markets. It's how they make their money, by embracing, extending and extinguishing standards. All they have to do is leverage Windows and build technologies into it directly or require proprietary technologies for development on Windows and then push them into their browser.
I don't think it'll be an issue this time around since the market is a different place than it was in the 90s.
Yeah, MS has more markets with monopoly influence to abuse than they did then.
In MS's position, they are selling a ready to go for most peoples use OS.
Sure they do, but that makes up an insignificant part of their market. MS's real market is to OEMs who then use it as one component of the computers systems they sell. The vast majority of people never install an OS. This is about MS having a monopoly one component of computer systems and forcing OEMs to buy a whole pile of applications as well, partly as a way to keep the Web too crippled to allow for good, portable applications.
If you want to compete in a market, you have to actually do something...
Considering Opera does very well at selling their browser to phone manufacturers, maybe it is the fact that the market is broken more than their ineptitude preventing them from being successful on OEM computer systems? We'll never know unless the market is leveled and they're given a fair chance to compete.
Besides bundling IE, what has MS done to block Opera on the desktop? We aren't talking Java here, or various other tech's that MS crippled from working.
It's funny you mention Java. MS made an incompatible version and bundled it in an attempt to keep Java crippled so it could not allow for easy cross platform apps. MS made a Web browser that was incompatible with the standards and crippled it by only using really old and broken specs so it could not allow for easy cross platform apps. I'm not really seeing lot of difference.
Bottom line, I don't want all the excess bundle...
Okay, duly noted. That said if it comes down to the Web remaining crippled for another decade or having to uninstall a few browsers when I do a fresh Windows install, I'm going with the latter and if that inconveniences you, consider the many, many hours Web developers and myself have wasted making Web pages because of MS's crime.
..there is nothing to get amazed. KDE, Gnome any other distro that bundles a single browser to their product will probably be asked to bundle more.
Why would they be asked to? They're not undermining any competition.
antitrust laws are not fair. they are not supposed to be fair. they should not be fair. they are equalizing moves that are used to whack down on the biggest shareholder in a market if they do anything wrong, illegal, or unethical.
What do you mean? Antitrust laws apply equally to everyone. They're not about "whacking down" anyone. They're about making sure companies with a lot of power don't abuse that power to undermine the free, capitalist market. Antitrust abuses are where trusts (companies or cartels) use their overwhelming power in one market to undermine a second market and provide artificial incentives for inferior products to succeed instead of letting competition decide.
Gaining monopoly influence is a lot like buying a gun. When you have one, you're responsible for your actions with it and while people who don't have them can go into bars and get trashed, when you do so with a gun you're putting everyone at risk and are likely to get busted if you're in the worng jurisdiction and anyone notices.
I think the EU needs to go back to determine if Microsoft still has a monopoly.
Legally, there is no question. They have monopolistic influence by a huge margin.
Microsoft no longer has all that much control even on it's own platform, much less all desktop PCs, given Mac's rapidly increasing market share.
You have fundamentally misunderstood the market. OS X's market share is irrelevant unless Apple starts licensing it to OEMs or offering large site licenses on generic hardware. If Dell (and other OEM customers) can't license OS X to put on the systems they ship, it is not in the market and does not matter to MS's influence.
Furthermore, if monopolies are characterized by a lack of competition for a good or service, then why is there a huge rise in the popularity of different web browsers.
Again, you've fundamentally misunderstood the second market involved. MS can have 5% of the browser market and it doesn't make a difference to this case. MS is being accused of using their monopoly on desktop OS's to skew the Web browser market. It doesn't matter if they have monopoly influence in the Web browser market or not.
Microsoft has lost desktop PC marketshare, lost broswer share, lost laptop share. If they held a monopoly in the 90s, it's clear to me they no longer do.
You seem a bit confused as to what the term "monopoly" means in the legal sense and to economists. You also seem a bit confused about what markets are involved and how their actions in tying those markets constitute antitrust abuse.
And if you ask most folks in the Valley now, they don't fear Microsoft anymore either.
Ask MS's customers how much influence MS has. They are the measure. Can the CEO Dell or HP tell MS to go take a flying leap and not be fired? I thought not.
Microsoft has a market share > 90% in many areas, so it's pretty open and shut; to claim otherwise is ludicrous.
Umm, that and they've already been ruled by the EU courts to have a monopoly on desktop OS's.
and we should care why? Monopoly schnopoly. Doesn't friggin matter.
Free market competition leads to better products. Antitrust abuse undermines free markets and leads to worse products and waste, sort of like why socialism resulted in really crappy products. If you don't lose market share or money for making crap, why make better stuff? Worse yet, MS makes money by making IE intentionally bad because it keeps the Web crippled and nonfunctional enough people can't just use the Web on some other OS.
It doesn't matter if you like using the Web that still relies upon partially implemented version of decade old technologies because one monopolist refuses to fix their browser to use any new technologies that might make the Web too useful and hurt their OS sales.
The 90s called.. they want their lawsuit back.
Yeah and they want their crimes back too.
Seriously EU, give it up, you've beaten this horse to death.
Yeah, just because the criminal is still committing the crime in no way undermines your authority. Why not quit now and let them continue to break the law?
Since all the browsers are free, how is anybody really gaining anything, competition wise?
Other Web browser makers have to spend millions on reverse engineering the way MS is intentionally broken because of the crime. Are you going to reimburse them? The Web itself is broken and prevented from moving forward so Web apps don't become viable options and allow people to move to platform independent solutions and later move to whatever OS they want. Nobody cares if innovation on the Web is crippled though, after all MS is making money.
Not to mention, the sheeple who don't know enough to go to the Firefox/Opera/etc website to get the browser themselves are just going to choose IE if the installer asks them a question anyways.
Some will, if the installer gives them a choice instead of just installing all of them. Either way it helps all of the above.
The decision would have been better placed to force MS to improce ie with a legally binding schedule agreed by apple, mozilla, microsoft and opera as to where browsers should ALL be in a years time.
So you're thinking a central committee should plan Web browser development and decide how much innovation should occur? I'm pretty sure that model failed spectacularly in the past compared to a fair, free market competition among companies to produce the best. Why not just restore the free market and let capitalism handle it like we do everything else?
I fail to see how forcing the bundling of a different browser(s) solves the problem. ...If they have no idea they'll just be irked and pick the first one on the list.
It doesn't completely solve the problem, but it helps. If users have to pick a browser they will talk about it and some will like a browser and others will like other browsers and they will do this thing Microsoft hates called "compete". Eventually different browsers will develop different reputations based upon which ones best satisfy users and those are the browsers that will be the most popular. This is a very, very good thing for the advancement of the Web and Web browsers. It rewards making a good product and encourages good products and makes the makers answerable for their own success.
The solution, IMO, would seem to be forcing Microsoft to ditch the "compatibility mode" in IE and stick to the standards so that new IE is as broken on sites coded to work with previous versions of IE as any other browser. Then, prohibit them from making any further "extensions" to the specs which caused the problem to begin with.
Here's the problem with that. It requires constant vigilance and work on the part of the EU. Who tests IE's compliance? Will those people be bribed? Will they become lax after a few years allowing MS to go back to business as usual? How much time and effort needs to be put in to sustain this forever? It is fine in the short term, but does not solve the problem in the long term.
What next? Force microsoft to unbundle the file explorer?
Why do you ask in a forum instead of just looking up what the law says? Was their a separate, pre-existing market when MS bundled the application into Windows? If yes, it is an antitrust abuse. If no, it is not. This isn't rocket science.
Agnostic enough to see that the brouhaha over web browser choice is just muscle flexing, and truly unhelpful in the long run.
Yeah, Odin forbid we have competition among Web browsers such that crappy browsers that still can't use standards completed a decade ago are not the most popular one in use resulting in the entire Web being frozen suing ancient technologies. That would be terrible to have (gasp) progress! It sure would suck if the majority of Web users could use vector graphics and audio and video without plug-ins and portable XML and had offline databases for using Web apps when the Web was unavailable. Golly that sure would be unhelpful.
I believe he's referring to the tying of the itunes software service, Apple's "FairPlay" DRM, and the iPod. Fairly clear-cut if you're a new-age "trust buster" who thinks everything is a monopoly, no?
Umm, yeah if enforcing laws written in the US at the start of World War I is considered "new-age". That crazy young hippy president Woodrow Wilson and his crystals!
mean, people _really like_ Apple and have decided to make the iPod the defacto DAP, so it's a monopoly even with countless ("not iPod though!") alternatives, no?
The number of alternatives doesn't matter, just how much influence they have on the market. 100 products with a combined market share of 1% does little to lessen the power of the company with 99%. You also seem confused in your implication that trusts are illegal. They are not. Just leveraging them into new markets is. There is nothing wrong with Apple gaining 99% of the portable music player market if they make a really good iPod. What is detrimental to society and illegal is Apple gaining huge portions of other markets because they make a great iPod and tie it. They need to win each market with the best product, jukebox software, online music services, and portable digital music players.
Maybe I'm just an idiot that needs to have this explained to me, but what is the significant difference between Microsoft bundling IE with Windows and Apple bundling Safari with OSX.
Antitrust law says you can't tie a monopolized product in one market to a product in a separate, pre-existing market. Doing so undermines fair competition in the second market. The same law applies to everyone.
Windows is a monopoly in the desktop OS market and this has been clearly determined by the courts and MS has been convicted of abuses before. IE is a separate product for which there was an existing market before they tied it (via bundling the most common form of tying and the first example in case law) to Windows.
Neither OS X or Safari constitutes a monopoly in any market so a law banning tying of a monopolized market with something else does not undermine either market and is not illegal in any way. Apple's iPod may or may not constitute monopoly influence on the portable digital music player market and if they decide it does Apple will have to stop tying iTunes and the ITunes music store to iPods.
Along the same lines, why has EU convicted them for the bundling of their media player with Windows, but not brought the same actions against Apple for bundling iTunes with OSX.
For this to be true Apple has to have a monopoly on desktop OS's or on jukebox software applications. Do you think they have a monopoly on either?
The only difference I can see is that Microsoft holds a larger market share, so they apparently have to play by different rules.
You could say that, but it is imprecise and misleading. An analogy is it would be saying "in order to comply with murder laws some people (who have guns pointed at other people) have to play by different rules when firing pistols." Firing pistols is legal in general and so is bundling products. Murder is illegal and so is undermining other markets using a monopolized market. Firing a pistol is one way someone can commit a murder and tying a monopolized and not monopolized product is one way people can undermine markets illegally.
MS in NO WAY stops Mozilla, or Apple, or anyone else, from loading their browser onto Windows. Anyone can go and load up any browser they damn well feel like.
Who said they couldn't?
Ergo, MS is not using their position to harm anyones ability to sell (or give away) browsers.
This is a non sequitur. By that argument bundling is never antitrust abuse and since it is the most common form of antitrust abuse, I'm telling you your cranium is full of rabbit crap. Just because you don't literally force people to do something doesn't mean you haven't undermined the free market to make a poorly made product artificially the best choice.
Seriously, answer my previous questions about your schooling so I can help prevent educational disasters like you from recurring and then go pick up a freaking econ book and find out what antitrust abuse is, in particular tying and bundling.
As a web developer, all I want is for MS to make IE compatible with standards. I'm sick of giving their browser special treatment, and I wouldn't if it didn't represent over 50% of my users.
If IE had 5% of the market would you care if it was not standards compliant? If it had 5% couldn't you just tell users to upgrade to any standards compliant browser? The root of why the incompatibility matters is market share and that share comes from bundling. Break the bundling and take corrective actions to fix the Web and it won't matter if IE is compliant. The main issue is fixing the Web so it is compliant and it could be that forcing IE into compliance is the easiest fix, but unless they are constantly going to be watchdogged and those watching cannot be corrupted or bribed, forcing IE to be compliant is not a good long term solution by itself. Removing their bundling removes their ability to break the Web all over again when scrutiny becomes more lax.
I think MS consciously chooses to keep IE incompatible with the standards so that sites developed for IE don't work in other browsers that are standards compliant. It's a monopolistic abuse of power.
The internal memos discovered in their US case more or less proved that was their strategy.
I am normally not the one to defend Microsoft, as I think the company, their business practices and almost all of their products suck bad. But I think shipping Windows without a default web browser, or to force Microsoft to bundle in Firefox, Safari or some other browser is problematic and actually unfair.
Is it fair to lock someone in a cage for years restricting their free movement and making them lose their job in the process? What if they are a repeat offender criminal who shows no inclination to stop their crimes and has just been convicted of robbing another liquor store?
This is a punishment for a crime and is designed to help the victims. If anything it is way too lenient.
Ok, I hate Internet Explorer probably more than anyone else in the universe, and would love to see it exorcised from windows... but this is going overboard.
I disagree.
It should be OEMs that choose to install Firefox or another browser. Forcing them to install all other browsers is just as bad as MS forcing them to always install IE with windows.
If this trial were taking place in 1995 I'd agree with you, but it is much to late for such a solution. If OEMs are allowed to choose today, they have an interest in picking the browser that works with all the pages that are broken such that they only work with IE. Those pages exist because of MS's deliberate campaign to create them and break the Web to stop competition. So allowing OEMs to choose alone is not sufficient to restore the market to competitiveness. The issue of all those broken pages and broken standards needs to be solved as well or it will still result in IE having a larger share of the market and more influence on the market than is provided by the honest merits of their work.
Besides, perhaps I want a computer with *NO* web browser! (there are plenty of cases where a computer would be used for a specific purpose that doesn't involve web access)
This is an extreme edge case and not where the EU should be focusing. You can do a little more work and remove the browsers.
Now, in all fairness, there is a good likelihood that OEMs are still quietly being pressured by MS to not install other browsers or even other non-MS software. If that is the case then this core issue needs to be addressed first.
The broken market is pressuring OEMs even if MS sits back and does nothing new. The fewer browsers they install the lower their support costs. The one browser they are unlikely to get complaints about and that requires the least training right now is IE. The one browser that can work with many broken pages is IE, because they were designed specifically to work with IE and nothing else.
At most, perhaps OEMs should get some incentive to install Firefox/Opera, but should not be required.
The best solutions are not an option right now. MS should be broken up into multiple companies, but it isn't going to happen anytime soon. More importantly the Web needs to be fixed and allowed to move forward. Maybe this is best done by requiring OEMs to install multiple browsers or maybe by forcing MS to adhere to modern standards as determined by independent bodies, but stopping the bundling without undoing the damage will get us nowhere fast.
Seriously... should we next force Coke to include a can of Pepsi in every 6-pack?
Why, is Coca-Cola a monopolist in one market and using their position to harm Pepsi's ability to sell cola?
I really wish you idiots would read a fricking book or wikipedia or at least educate yourself to have a clue what you're talking about before spouting off this nonsensical crap. Do you have a four year degree? If so please tell me where it is from so I can send them a note about why econ101 is usually required and that if they have such a requirement they need textbook printed in the last 100 years.
Wait, I actually like MS's calculator program for its simplicity. Why do you get the right to tell me what I am supposed to prefer?
How am I telling you what you should prefer? How am I telling you what you should use? I'm just telling you that Microsoft has no right to decide what OEMs bundle with computers they sell. If you aren't trolling, you're confused.
Oh, I forgot--you're left-leaning politically. Heh.
Actually I'm a moderate conservative, which makes me seem fairly left to people from the US. That has nothing to do with this, however, as these laws have been in existence since about the time the democratic-republican party split in two and started to drift towards different ends of the spectrum.
This "free market forces are failing because X is not the best product on the market" is a red herring.
Actually, the argument is that the free market is failing because we don't know if the best product is being chosen because it is never given the chance. The whole point of antitrust law is to stop monopolies from undermining competition in the free market, like MS is. If you don't understand that or believe it, fine, but argue why you think the antitrust law in general is wrong, because MS has clearly broken it and the laws are almost identical in the US, EU, and most other industrialized nations. You've got hundreds of years of economics to debunk.
Great. So why waste all the energy on Microsoft including a (mandatory, in this day and age) browser integrated in the OS that is already being used less and less by people.
Because the Web is still broken and a decade behind where it would be if every copy of IE turned into any other major browser tomorrow. Because MS documents admitted their intention was to cripple the Web and keep it from being too useful. Because this is a solvable problem and because it is better than waiting another decade and hoping charitable organizations manage to solve the problem while the criminal goes unpunished.
I find it interesting how people play so fast and loose with words here, saying things like "true competition" when Linux, FreeBSD, and a few others ARE true competition to Windows.
Sure they are, but not valid competitors such that they have any real market influence. The CEO of Dell can decide to ship his machines with Linux, but he'll also get fired the next week. His other option is to capitulate to MS's demands and when those demands effect other markets, MS is potentially breaking the law.
The reason more people are adopting Firefox and not Linux itself is one of, again, consumer education and the difficulty of switching.
MS's stranglehold on Web browsers is less than that of OS's, but that doesn't matter. Even if MS only had 5% of the browser market, bundling IE would still undermine that market and break the law.
Hence, a lot of slashdotters, probably not being entirely honest with themselves in regards to their motivations, want to handicap Windows to benefit Linux.
Stopping the bundling of IE doesn't hamper Windows, except in making it harder for them to cripple other technologies. The only ways in which IE benefits adoption of windows are illegal ways. MS crippling the Web so that people can't have portable Web applications that let them choose other OS's is a crime and if you can't see why crippling an entire field of technology is bad for consumers you've been drinking way too much kool-aid.
The solution would be to split Microsoft up into separate companies so you didn't have the guys with 90% of the operating system market also producing applications - but that isn't within the EU's power.
Technically, it is within their power, but they won't order it because of diplomatic reasons. I'd also argue a much better way to split up MS is not into applications and OS, but into multiple companies each with full rights to the Windows OS and forbid them from collaboration. It would much more effectively kill MS's ability to leverage their monopoly and spur innovation. "What you don't want to sell us a stripped down version of XP for netbooks, fine we'll see if the other Windows seller is interested in this lucrative business deal."
Quite true and insightful. Who _cares_ what the default browser is. If it's Firefox, then Firefox will have an "unfair advantage".
Yup, but that's still better than now because Mozilla does not have a vested interest in keeping the Web broken and crippled and does not already have a monopoly and are not a repeatedly convicted criminal. Internal documents did not reveal they had a plan to cripple the entire Web to keep it from threatening their other products. Firefox does a reasonable job of adhering to standards including implementing technologies MS has more or less completely left out of IE resulting in vector graphics and portable XML being unusable on the Web.
Can you list some of these good books that you have read?
Off the top of my head there was The Great Depression by Robert McElvaine. There was also something by Noam Chomsky that covered it well and some bestseller I picked up with a title including "blinders" although the title eludes my recall and a quick Google search.
Of course new versions of Windows will come with newer versions of IE anyways, and IE8 is approaching "reasonably standards compliant" to some degree, so the argument of standards is kind of specious.
Bullshit. They aren't even close to any other major browser let alone the cutting edge ones. Take a look at the my response to the last commenter to this to see specific dates and standards.
Firefox isn't standards compliant either, and it's getting to the point where choosing browsers means choosing between different non-standards compliance.
No browser is 100% standards compliant, but all the other ones are so much further along than IE that your equivocation is laughable. Beside that, they don't have to be standards complaint because the Web itself is not. It is broken because the one browser that most people use, which ships with Windows is so broken there is little point in using newer technologies. Who spends money making Web pages only 30% of users can use? By forcing IE to standards compliance or forcing it out of the position of being the only one bundled you restore competition so if IE doesn't work, users still have something that does. This motivates browser developers to move forward with new technologies and Web page developers to use them. That's the point.
Opera has never spent a lot of time trying to be compatible with IE anyways.
Yeah they've only wasted millions on it instead of hundreds of millions. You just admitted, I might mention, that one of their major problems is lack of compatibility with broken pages MS memos reveal they intentionally set out to make broken to prevent people from being able to compete. That's a crime.
Except that things are already changing; FF has been gaining marketshare, and the web is becoming more and more compliant.
FF is only gaining share slowly and only then by having so much better of a feature set as to be completely overwhelming. Other browser which are still better than IE are not gaining share, only because of IE's advantage of being bundled, which undermines their profits. As for standards compliance, XHTML was a completed W3C recommended standard in 2001. It is 2009 and MS fails entirely to have a usable implementation. The first version of SVG was recommended in 2001 as well. CSS 2 was 1998. You may claim that the Web is moving towards more standards but MS has managed to cripple the Web and keep pages a decade behind where they would be if IE simply did not exist. Moving glacially towards completing eight year old standards is not sufficient for innovation in a high tech industry.