Opera Files EU Complaint Against Microsoft
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:35 AM
from the reopening-the-browser-wars dept.
from the reopening-the-browser-wars dept.
A number of readers have sent word about Opera Software ASA's antitrust complaint against Microsoft filed with the EU. Here is Opera's press release on the filing. The company wants the EU to "obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop" and to "require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities." The latter request makes this a case to watch. Will the Commissioner take the Acid2 test using IE7?
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Rehash (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a great idea and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not quite what they said... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Opera press release:
Unbundling IE doesn't necessarily mean shipping an OS without a browser. If IE is an optional component, OEMs could still preinstall one browser or another. Even Opera is taking into account the fact that removing IE entirely might not be feasible, and suggesting that the system come with at least one alternative.
I agree that an OS needs to ship with a web browser. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a specific browser except for company policy. Witness Apple replacing IE with Safari, or Red Hat replacing Mozilla with Firefox, etc.
Re:This is a great idea and all, but... (Score:5, Funny)
De Facto Standard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has forced IE into a "defacto standard". Now every web designer has to write code that works on IE and browsers that are not broken. Often you will see web pages that only work on IE.
Silverlight is the next step. Flash is bad enough but Silverlight will make it even harder to keep the Internet OS neutral.
To solve the no browser issue is real easy. Just provide an Icon for that will download Firefox, IE, Opera, or Safari from the desktop. Let the user decide at runtime.
Of course you will then have to change the HTML help system so it can work with any browser and not just IE.
I am all for requiring IE to follow standards. Not bundling would be great IMHO but I just don't think it is practical.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The good news is someone's finally getting it: they finally want to force MS into standards compliance. That's all that really matters. I don't see the browser application itself (or media player, for that matter) as a monopoly abuse - it's the content that's the abuse. IE/WMP both play proprietary content, using Windows as the vehicle.
Sabotaging Windows' built-in media capabilities only harms consumers. Preventing MS from leveraging those capabilities to push their own proprietary, non-interoperable formats helps them and everyone else.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple bundle Safari, but it's trivial to remove in it's entirety (or simply not install), different linux distributions bundle different browsers and they can always be removed/replaced easily... What windows distributors (ie OEMs) really need is the ability to remove ie completely and replace it with a third party browser, instead of being forced to install the third party browser alongside the buggy outdated one that's built in.
And as for not having a functional browser, there are many many other areas where windows lacks functional apps in comparison to other systems, they don't bundle a functional spreadsheet (or even a facility to view spreadsheets) for instance, nor do they bundle an ssh client/server (everyone else does, and ssh is becoming the standard for remote admin of network devices, replacing telnet), they don't even have a secure erase tool by default and many other shortcomings compared to other systems.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
You're absolutely right.
The thing to bear in mind here is that the web browser is not part of the operating system when you take into account what an operating system actually is. The web browser is an application that runs on the operating system; it is not a part of the OS itself. Microsoft may have built IE in this way, but the implementation doesn't necessarily define where the lines are drawn. The availability of a myriad of different web browsers, each of which is fully capable of running on a variety of OSs without being integrated, proves this. Microsoft has gotten away with IE bundling primarily because they claimed it isn't feasible to remove IE from the OS. That is a load of BS, but they fooled the courts once.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
My ADSL router (a Netgear DG834G) uses a web interface for its configuration panel. I might have a hard time getting on the internet to download a browser if I don't have a browser to set up my internet connection.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The rules are DIFFERENT when dealing with a monopoly.
Stuff that is perfectly legal, reasonable, and even encouraged in a competitive environment are disallowed in a monopoly.
Re:Vista (Score:4, Informative)
If you are talking about back end stuff like Windows Update, that's not even done through a web page in Vista anyway. Maybe it uses some IE components in the background but I doubt the Firefox people want to make a module to update Windows anyway and updates to the OS is Microsoft's space anyway - a basic part of the OS. Not sure what else you could be referring to. Web based Help for Windows? Same idea.
Re:Vista (Score:5, Informative)
I have Vista and Opera, and Opera is set as default. If you click a link anywhere in Windows, it launches Opera. For example, if you get an error there is a link to an appropriate KB article on microsoft.com. Clicking this for me launches it in Opera.
The only programs I've found that don't honour the default are Yahoo Messenger and City of Heroes - apparently they prefer to hardcode to launch IE, which is their choice.
Two obvious things: (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they don't. However, KDE, Apple, and even Nintendo, do.
Why? Because Microsoft is a monopoly. Monopolies have to play by different rules.
Actually, it is, because I can actually uninstall Konqueror. Dolphin is the new default file manager, and nothing else requires Konqueror. I can then set Firefox or Opera as the default browser.
Now, I like Konqueror, so I keep it around, but that is fundamentally different than IE. If Dell wanted to ship Kubuntu machines with Firefox instead of Konqueror, they could do that. But Dell cannot ship Windows machines with Firefox instead of IE, because you cannot remove IE from Windows.
Isn't that a legitimate complaint?
More importantly, IE is the least standards-compliant of any browser, STILL. Isn't it damaging to the Web as a whole to have the most popular browser also be the least compliant? It's precisely because of these people you talk about that I can't simply design a page for standards -- I now have to design it once for the standards (tested in Firefox, Konqueror, Safari, and Opera), and then add in a ton of hacks to make it work in IE.
Re:Just shut up already (Score:4, Insightful)
It is fundamentally different for one very good reason:
Microsoft are a convicted monopolist, the vendors using KDE are not. It is illegal for a monopoly to use their market position to leverage other markets, which is exactly what they are doing.
Also, I should point out that I know of no Linux distribution which comes with only one browser.
If Dell and others feel comfortable distributing **Linux**, what makes you think they wouldn't distribute Opera and Firefox if there were a demand for that?
Because there is no financial incentive to do so. They have already paid for IE (since it is bundled as part of the cost of Windows), so shipping another browser instead doesn't save them any money. It is easier for them to just leave the Windows installation as-is rather than having to remove IE (which is easier said than done) and install another browser.
On the other hand, if IE wasn't bundled with the stock distribution the cost to Dell of installing any (free) browser would be the same, giving other browsers an equal footing.
The people that Opera is whining about not having access to, are largely the people who think that Internet Explorer is "The Internet."
By either not bundling IE, or bundling alternatives, these people's awareness would be raised and they might actually try alternatives (and find something that suits them better) rather than assuming IE is "the internet". I see no reason why peoples' ignorance should be used as a reason for perpetuating their ignorance.
Re:isn't MS already supposed to have unbundled IE? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:isn't MS already supposed to have unbundled IE? (Score:5, Insightful)
But we do this all the time. For example, here in the US, electrical devices are required to work on 120V 60Hz AC, and I haven't heard that this is a major impediment to innovation. Granted, there are minor grumbles from manufacturers about needing several different power supplies, so that 240V AC and 50Hz AC can also be used. But still, how has this stifled innovation?
And note that both the Internet and the Web have standards that are in every sense a "committee" design. In this case, we did hear a lot of grumbling from knowedgeable geeks that both IP/TCP and HTTP/HTML were far from optimal designs. But in fact we don't hear this much from the vendors, who are mostly managed by people who don't have a clue about data packets or text markup. And in fact, both the Internet and the Web have led to a blizzard of innovation from millions of companies, despite their suboptimal committee design nature.
The real problem here is that the legal and political systems are fairly clueless about computer technology, and are likely to totally screw up any decrees with a technical component. Thus, the right solution to the problems caused by Microsoft's obstructionism is a strict separation between "system" and "application" software. Since MS sells an OS, it shouldn't be permitted to sell user-level applications. This would eliminate things like claiming that a browser is tied into the OS, and it would put pressure on the OS people to fully document their APIs. But there's no chance whatsoever that such a separation will ever come about, because nobody in any legislature or court (except Al Gore
In fact, IE is already a good example of how not imposing such a "committee" design causes problems. If MS's claim that IE is tied to the OS are true, then their desire for market control has led to an atrociously bad design of their OS. Of course, the fact that they did quickly supply IE-free versions of Windows showed that they were simply lying. But the fact that they have mostly gotten away with doing this is itself a major block to innovation. It has led to the widespread management support of web sites that only "work" with IE. This not only sabotages the general need for industry standards; it also forces developers not working for MS to waste time trying to make their software work for non-standard browsers for where there is no full documentation.
It's hard to see how this helps innovation, when the really innovative web software such as opera, firefox, safari, icab, konqueror, et al are pushed aside by the general pressure to work only with IE and not worry about the "unpopular" browsers.