EU Accepts Microsoft's Browser Choice Promise 336
itwbennett writes "Hurrah! The European Commission's antitrust investigation of Microsoft's position in the browser market is over. The EC has accepted Microsoft's commitment to offer users of 'Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 a choice screen through which they can pick the browsers they want to install on their PC,' writes Peter Sayer in an article on ITworld. 'The screen will be offered to users in the European Union and some neighboring countries for the next five years via the Windows Update mechanism. In addition, PC manufacturers will be allowed to ship computers with competing Web browsers, as well as or instead of Internet Explorer.'"
Yeah right. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Will this "FAIR" decision will include Apple? (Score:2, Informative)
Last I heard Apple weren't a convicted monopolist.
Re:Next up (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Will this "FAIR" decision will include Apple? (Score:1, Informative)
The difference is that Apple, unlike Microsoft, is far away from a monopoly. They can be as uncompetitive as they want and get away with it, because their market is still too small to matter in the big picture. And IMHO, Apple users don't deserve any better for buying overpriced eye-candy.
Re:This is only fair under one condition (Score:4, Informative)
Seems to me if MS has to comply with this, Apple should be held to the same standard.
Apple is not in a monopoly position, MS is. Different rules apply when you are, specifically about abusing your monopoly power in one area (e.g. operating systems) to muscle your way into another (e.g. web browsers).
Re:YAY (Score:3, Informative)
Wait, what? That's exactly the point: preventing companies from abusing their de facto monopoly in one market to strangle other markets.
The computer manufacturers can't abuse it, because:
1) None has a dominant position in the market
2) The browser they ship won't be theirs, so they're not gaining market share, the web browser developer is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_82 [wikipedia.org]
Re:past behaviour (Score:5, Informative)
Anti-competitive behaviour is not like murder. That's an unfair comparison.
MS was fined 1.3 billion for past behaviour. This promise is needed for them not to get future fines:
http://slashdot.org/yro/08/02/27/1152208.shtml?tid=98
Re:This is only fair under one condition (Score:1, Informative)
You can delete the Safari application, but you cannot delete WebKit. WebKit is indeed required for the proper functioning of MacOSX, as are the Cocoa and Carbon bindings for interacting with WebKit. This is really no different than the situation in Windows where you can remove Internet Explorer but not the Trident renderer or the various libraries to host the HTML renderer.
Re:Hurray! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:oh dear (Score:1, Informative)
Outlook does IMAP just fine, I'm using it for both my university and gmail account (i don't even have pop enabled on my gmail account, so when I add the account to outlook, it autoconfigures for imap)...
Re:About time. (Score:1, Informative)
Ironically IE was once the hip new upstart with better features and a minority share to the old dinosaur that was netscape. What makes you so sure that if FF obliterated IE it wouldn't make the same mistakes? (And trust me I'm no big IE fan, I've used FF since '04, just playing devil's advocate)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will this "FAIR" decision will include Apple? (Score:4, Informative)
Apple is under no legal obligation to sell anything on their hardware, nor is any other hardware vendor. They are not powerful enough to trigger the laws Microsoft has triggered, and therefore do not have any limitations on what they can ship their computers with.
Re:This is only fair under one condition (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hurray! (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't been working much in a corporate environment, have you?
Re:Windows XP (Score:2, Informative)
Thank you for your interest in obtaining updates from our site.
To use this site, you must be running Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later.
To upgrade to the latest version of the browser, go to the Internet Explorer Downloads website.
If you prefer to use a different web browser, you can obtain updates from the Microsoft Download Center or you can stay up to date with the latest critical and security updates by using Automatic Updates. To turn on Automatic Updates: 1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Depending on which Control Panel view you use, Classic or Category, do one of the following:
* Click System, and then click the Automatic Updates tab.
* Click Performance and Maintenance, click System, and then click the Automatic Updates tab.
3. Click the option that you want. Make sure Automatic Updates is not turned off.
Re:This is only fair under one condition (Score:2, Informative)
I've never installed a Mac OS, so I'm curious: are you given the option to chose your web browser on installation of a Mac OS?
Your view is poorly informed. There is no law that says you can't bundle an OS and a Web browser. You can, however, break a law by taking that action. For example, if I ship Firefox with my OS of choice but don't comply with the license, I'm committing copyright infringement. Does that mean the only fair thing is for all Linux distributions to be banned from shipping Firefox with their OS, even if they obey the law?
...this issue isn't about browser quality but rather about MS "forcing" users into using IE.
You're wrong. This is mostly about MS forcing IE onto OEMs by bundling it with the OS, pressuring them using their desktop OS monopoly, and making it incompatible in ways they crafted to intentionally make the Web itself reliant on their browser (as revealed by the famous embrace, extend memos in the US case). In short, MS has monopoly influence on the desktop OS market and they've used that to push into the Web browser market by using their leverage over their customers (OEMs and large site licensees). If you buy your OS (as an OEM) from MS you rarely have other viable options so MS has a lot of power over you, power they are forbidden by law to use in certain, uncompetitive ways.
So where does Apple fit in? Apple doesn't license their OS to OEMs at all. They compete in the computer system market against Dell and HP and Lenovo. If you buy your systems from Apple, Apple does not have the same leverage over you. They have about 10% of the market and there are lots of competitors willing to sell you something else. Apple famously started bundling displays and computers making the iMac all-in-one. A lot of people did not want the two bundled. They wanted a different monitor, so they stopped buying Apple systems and bought from someone else. Such bundling is perfectly legal so long as they don't have monopoly influence on one of the markets involved. Some day soon, Apple may have enough share of the digital music download market or the digital music player market, or even the cell phone market for antitrust law to restrict what they can bundle with their products in those markets. The EU has already looked into one of them. It's the same law applied equally to everyone. You just have to know what the law is in order to understand that everyone is being held to the same standard.
Re:Hurray! (Score:3, Informative)
To eliminate bias, the choice screen is presented as a neutral window, not a full Internet Explorer window as Microsoft initially proposed, and the browsers are presented in random, rather than alphabetical, order. The five most popular browsers -- initially Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera -- will be displayed first, while users will be able to scroll the list to pick from seven others, initially AOL, Maxthon, K-Meleon, Flock, Avant Browser, Sleipnir and Slim Browser. The list will be reviewed every six months.
FTA (I know... nobody reads it)
Re:Depends on the description... (Score:3, Informative)
You are buying a new computer, please choose:
A) Windows 7
B) Mac OSX 10.6
C) Ubuntu 10.04
D) OpenSUSE 11.2
E) Fedora 12
Look who's winning now.
Re:Depends on the description... (Score:2, Informative)
* Remember, they are currently working on incrementing their version number as fast as they think they can get away with.
Really?
OTOH
From where I see it the release schedule of Firefox is incrementing the version number far more frequently. And besides, who cares? There's some amazing 0.99 version software and some amazing 10.5 version software. Don't hate on IE just for hating.
Re:I demand choice in my car as well (Score:3, Informative)