EU Antitrust Troubles Continue For Microsoft 593
Julie188 writes "Opera Software's year-old antitrust complaint against Microsoft took another step toward being vindicated, and the Oslo-based browser maker can't help crowing over the European Commission's decision. Opera had filed a complaint with the EC in December, 2007, contending that Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows violated antitrust rules. Yesterday, the EC sent a 'Statement of Objections (SO)' to Microsoft with a preliminary finding that bundling IE with Windows does indeed constitute an antitrust abuse. Microsoft has eight weeks to plead its case and change the EC's mind, an unlikely outcome if ever there was one. Opera's CEO said, 'On behalf of all Internet users, we commend the Commission for taking the next step towards restoring competition in a market that Microsoft has strangled for more than a decade.'"
Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:But what about...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
solution? (Score:1, Interesting)
I think that microsoft should make it a one or two click affair to try out different browsers, different programs like open office for trying.
at least i think this would a reasonable solution to the anti-trust
(except my fantasy of microsoft getting sliced into little pieces :D )
Re:But what about...? (Score:5, Interesting)
They tried that defense (intimately tied to the OS) at the original antitrust trials and an expert was able to remove IE back then in less than an hour.
The FACT that Microsoft has made IE more indespensable to windows, not less, pretty much is giving the Justice Department a big middle finger. No Linux distro I know of nor OS X fundamentally needs it's OS to do updates or anything like that. It's just BS on MS's part.
I hope they get shafted by the EU, since I feel shafted everytime MS forces me to use IE for one of their piddly little tasks.
There is no desktop web browser market (Score:1, Interesting)
Opera have always been suffering under the delusion that customers would be lining up to buy their desktop product if only Microsoft wasn't "strangling the market". This is such bullshit. Since day 1 everyone has been saying that Opera are on crack. Web browsers are expected to be free. Sure, maybe some people would like to pay for a web browser.. I mean, people pay for bottled water too.
Every time Opera talks to the press I get the feeling that they would like nothing better than to force Microsoft and Mozilla to charge $99 so they can go back to doing the same.
Re:But what about...? (Score:1, Interesting)
Microsoft uses IE for a great many things keeping security within windows.
Besides the fact that you can simply just get firefox and use the IE emulator for anything IE required. I rarely use IE unless it's required and even then it's only 1 click emulation start. Not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Aren't other browsers already bundled into new PC's anyways? I'm quite content with free browsers out there. I can't see myself ever paying for one in the future. Opera makes a halfway decent browser for mobile phones, but I don't surf enough sites that require it to pay for it so I use IE instead.
Re:You don't need a browser to download (Score:2, Interesting)
add/remove programs that actually adds programs.
I was floored when I found out that it actually could. Applications (in the form of MSI files) can be advertised using group policy and made available based on Active Directory group membership. As cool as it is, sadly though, self provisioning of applications doesn't facilitate license compliance or dumb users very well.
Re:When is someone going to point out... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want the terms of use for Microsoft software, here they are: http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx [microsoft.com].
Re:How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bundling doesn't stop consumer choice. (Score:2, Interesting)
I absolutely cannot stand IE as it is today, and so, I'm typing this post using Google Chrome on Windows Vista.
How does Opera even make an anti-trust argument when FireFox is gobbling up IE market share? For an increasing percentage of Windows users, IE is the thing you use to download some other browser.
From a consumer perspective, that a Linux distribution comes with Firefox is not really any different than a Windows distribution coming with IE. In both cases, I can go and get and use the browser that I want to use. Really, in that sense, Opera's problem is not so much Microsoft as it is Google. FireFox and Chrome are both better than Opera is too, and that's really what Opera's problem is.
Re:How? (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as I'm concerned MS still can bundle IE, I only need the ability to uninstall it after downloading $otherbrowser (and no, removing the IE shortcuts is not enough).
It's not a complete OS without the browser (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I cannot conceive selling a consumer/business OS without a web browser these days. From the end user perspective, browsing the web is simply a piece of basic functionality. What's more, it would make windows the only consumer grade OS that does not have a browser after installing a graphical environment. OS X has safari. The major desktop environments for *nix have a browser by default (galleon or konqueror) or the distro has added one (firefox in xubuntu, for example). Even damn small has dillo.
Technically, it does not make much sense to yank the browser out. If I understand correctly, Trident draws much of the windows desktop anyway, so it is a small step to wrap a window around it and call it a browser.
No, today the browser is just part of the OS. The Commission's directorate general of anti-competition (DG Comp, for those who hang out at Schuman) missed the boat on this one. They should have been fighting this fight a decade ago. Today is too late.
Re:But what about...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Removing IE breaks a lot of functionality in XP,
You're joking, right? Try XPlite, for example:
http://www.litepc.com/ [litepc.com]
Works as advertised.
Any number of shells exist for replacing windows explorer, too. Most actually have *more* functionality.
Anyway, they don't need to remove it - just deliver XP - or, probably be more relevant to be talking about Vista - with alternative browers installed as well. Opera, Firefox, Chrome.
Re:How? (Score:4, Interesting)
It sure is. But it also means that people are compelled to use the browser you bundled simply because it's always there. The rules are different when you're a monopolist as even something you throw in as a convenience feature could severely impact markets.
In this case Microsoft should't even be hit too hard - MSHTML will still be in the OS simply out of neccessity; it's simply the web browser GUI that gets axed. The only thing that would really break are badly programmed applications that ignore the default browser setting and directly call iexplore.exe.
So essentially any program that ships on a Windows install DVD is sacrosanct for all times because it's part of the base install? If not, who decides which programs are neccessary for a modern operating system and which aren't? If we go by the classical OS definition, not even a GUI is required for an operating system; a mere hardware abstraction layer with process scheduling would suffice. We could go for an ISO standard, but that would require a committee and five years of deliberation time (plus ISO has been shown to be bribable).
It's possible to use Windows productively without using Internet Explorer so I'd guess having IE as part of the base install is not really necessary, especially as OEMs will bundle either IE or other browsers when building their systems.
Useless. If the EU whips up fines large enough to destroy Microsoft it'd either get hit by sanctions via WIPO or Microsoft would simply withdraw from the EU and work doubly hard to ensure its monopoly in other parts of the world - and complete incompatibility with all open standards to force Europe to import Windows anyway. If the fines even get through; Microsoft would make sure that the appeals suit would take decades.
Impossible; Microsoft is not a European company and the EU is unlikely to take over the USA anytime soon. The EU can attack Microsoft's local subsidiaries but that's scarcely going to kill the corp - and, again, would probbly create bad consequences as the USA wouldn't appreciate such actions against one of the government's larger sponsors.
Which essentially means they can do whatever they want because the US government is bought off and nobody else has the power to outright destroy them. That's not a terribly good idea as Microsoft still controls the desktop OS market and is known to put any monopolies it has to their fullest use. Having Microsoft dictate the terms of desktop computing is not going to help the European IT industry in any way so there's little incentive to let it happen.
Completely stopping their business is okay but restricting it is wrong? By that logic, judges shouldn't issue restraining orders anymore because everyone should be either completely free or dead.
It's not like nobody would buy Windows anymore because it doesn't come with a browser. Every OEM will bundle something so for virtually everyone Windows still does come with one and the rest