EC Considering Removing Internet Explorer From Windows 827
Itsabouttime writes "In a preliminary ruling, the European Commission told Microsoft that linking Internet Explorer to its dominant Windows operating system violates EC rules. The EC's ruling was triggered by a complaint from IE rival Opera. Microsoft could seek to offer a Windows version without IE, as it did in the EC's 2004 ruling on Windows Media Player."
Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at the facts:
the EC said tying Internet Explorer with Windows provides Internet Explorer with an artificial distribution advantage
That's stating the obvious.
Now check out the timeline on this procedure. Microsoft was accused of tying Windows Media Player to Windows in 2004. That's what the current case is based on.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson:
Under EU procedure, the European Commission will not make a final determination until after it receives and assesses Microsoftâ(TM)s response
In other words, expect this to last another few years before anything happens. By then, Internet Explorer will have been renamed Windows 8 and Microsoft will argue that the lawsuit is moot. Do consumers win? Lawyers do, that's for sure. Slow justice is no justice.
Expect Microsoft to offer to ship a version of Windows without any web browser. So you won't be able to download firefox either!
--
FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- where geeks are their own boss
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I'm confused about what Opera expects to get out of this. I know I, for one, would be pretty pissed off to open up my new computer and not have any way to go download Firefox. What exactly are they hoping to gain? Are they really arguing that new computers should ship with no internet browser what so ever?
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I guess I'm confused about what Opera expects to get out of this
Punitive damages, and their lawyers fees paid.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
But you're right. Practically speaking, who cares.
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If nobody cares, then what right do you have to make them care...?
Let's build the New Socialist Man while we're at it. The EU can be in charge.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Interesting)
It's our responsibility as people educated in dealing with technology to help the less skilled make better tech decisions. It benefits all of us in the long run.
"Not making people care" is why there are still a lot of people out there running IE6 on Win98 sucking up a lot of available bandwidth because they are part of a spam botnet. This affects me.
So yes, I will attempt to make them care.
It's called doing the right thing. Not socialism. Caring about your fellow man (especially when it benefits you) does not make you a commie pinko. Grow the fuck up.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more than that. IE can not be uninstalled.
Even if OEMs choose to include any other browser(s), they currently must alway have IE regardless if they want it or not.
And there is a strong tenancy to not have multiple applications that do the same thing. So which browser winds up getting installed? Right, IE. Because there is no choice.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Informative)
This was done intentionally by Microsoft, even going so far as making important components like Explorer depend on it. This isn't really the case any more for most of Windows, but the third party programs still need it, so removing it would break a lot of programs people use.
Firefox is not a replacement either, because it does not implement any of the interfaces that the IE framework does (even though they could go to MSDN and implement them, but we're talking about a lot of work here.)
Now... you could remove the actual IE program itself, as few other programs depend on it, but what would be the point? To save a few megabytes?
I mean, there is already the option to remove access to it and use another browser as default. That's really all OEMs would need to ship a third-party browser (it would be problematic for Microsoft to do so.)
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
That is because IE is not just the browser frontend, it is an entire framework that a lot of third party applications depend on.
This was done intentionally by Microsoft, even going so far as making important components like Explorer depend on it. This isn't really the case any more for most of Windows, but the third party programs still need it, so removing it would break a lot of programs people use.
Back in 1995, this was very important to getting the Internet to the users and people seem to forget that. You didn't have many choices back then, especially if you wanted to write an app that used HTML in any meaningful way. It was pretty original to use HTML inside applications as a simple object, and it made coding these applications very easy.
Nowadays everyone and their brother has a HTML renderer, so it's moot, but it would break all the legacy apps that use the IE components.
What Opera and other companies really want is IE off the start menu and the components left in the OS.
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Note the SZ value is what is inside the quotes...
1. Create a registry key with the name of the process you want to prevent to execute. Ex.: iexplore.exe
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\iexplore.exe
2. Under this new key you've just created, create a SZ value called "Debugger" and set it to the following
The party has arrived (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Interesting)
While running under Wine, Steam can use Gecko as its rendering engine and it works fairly well. (getting the games to work will is a whole different situation)
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
I see, and when IE is taken out of the windows install and the new user is provided with discs containing Opera, Firefox, Chrome and IE, which will they choose to install? The ones who don't care (i.e. the ones who are scared of the computer and just want to get back to myspace) will pick the one carrying the same logo as was on the splash screen when they started the computer.
I have an ideology too, and mine is that I want my computer to do as much out of the box as possible, with the minimum of fuss. If the operating system manufacturer has included extra apps to do things that I want to do, great. If those apps are surpassed enough by something third party that it's worth the minimal effort taken to switch, I'll switch,
I suspect that most people who are willing to use 3rd party apps feel the same - 3rd party apps which suck don't have the right to try and poach users from the OS manufacturer's apps by stopping users having that default and hoping to bamboozle them into installing the suckier 3rd party app. If your app is good people will use it anyway.
And now for the car analogy:
Imagine a world where electric windows aren't standard. Now, imagine that someone starts selling aftermarket electric windows. Now imagine that a car manufacturer, seeing the popularity of electric windows, starts to offer electric windows as standard equipment (and modifies its manufacturing process such that they can't really build cars without electric windows). The manufacturer's electric windows can still be replaced with new ones; if the aftermarket window people can offer a sufficient improvement to be worth getting it done they'll still do business, if they can't; they won't. Now, why should the situation be different if only one company makes cars?
So their size and ability to provide electric windows for 'free' makes it difficult to compete? Sucks to be you - make a better product or make a different add on in the full expectation that it'll become standard equipment in a few years, but don't bitch that you want the people who buy the cars to be forced to take the car home from the dealer and then either pay you to fit your electric windows, leaving their car out of action for a week, or return it to the dealer to fit electric windows for free, but still leaving them car-less for a week.
While I can see that developers need to eat, I can also see that the alternative is that everyone suffers for having useful features taken away from them. Or, like they did with Windows XP N, the only people who'll care enough to buy the crippled version are the people who would have cared enough to install alternate software whether the built-in was there or not.
Do we see KDE complaining that Explorer competes with KDE4 for windows? OpenOffice complaining that wordpad competes with them? Octave complaining that for simple work calc competes with them? Zonealarm complaining that windows now includes a firewall? No.
How much more of the ability of a fresh windows install to just let the user get on with what they want to be doing is going to be chipped away at because someone else wants an opening to peddle something to users to enable them to do what they could before?
Finally, I hear no-one screaming that linux should adhere to the same standards. Linux will not 'win' whilst it's seen as trying to create an unfair playing field with legal actions. If someone suggested that Firefox, Lynx, Konqueror and Nautilus were abolished from default installs so that other browsers could get a shot, it would be laughed off the mailing list. Someone sugesting that both browsers and all methods of getting browsers should go, forcing users to get them from a seperate disc would probably find themselves off the mailing list sharpish.
The computer is a wonderful tool because it can do so many things, trying to make it so that it won't do those things without first fiddling with it is a step backwards - especially as there are lots of other things that people may want to do which rely on internet explorer being t
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Basic FTP clients aren't exactly a major source of income, so I don't think any sort of anti-trust suit would get anywhere.
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Basic FTP clients aren't exactly a major source of income, so I don't think any sort of anti-trust suit would get anywhere.
I'd be willing to bet there are about as many people paying for FTP clients on Windows as there are Web Browsers.
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Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Informative)
As I recall, the command line ftp.exe is pretty much straight out of BSD. It is also a single executable that can be removed without breaking the operating system.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I'm confused about what Opera expects to get out of this.
That's very understandable given the assumptions made by both the summary and the post you're responding to.
I know I, for one, would be pretty pissed off to open up my new computer and not have any way to go download Firefox.
That's not going to happen. No remedy is going to stop Dell or HP from bundling what they want, just Microsoft. From the end user perspective it means you might get a different browser pre-installed and if you build your own computer from components you may have to burn a CD with a browser on it.
What exactly are they hoping to gain?
Opera's complaint specifically addressed the fact that MS's abuse has resulted in a huge portion of the Web no longer being standards compliant and that this was part of MS's intention as revealed by their internal memos. I suspect Opera hopes for several things possibly including, Windows shipping with multiple browsers and MS being forced to make IE standards compliant and supporting a reasonable level of new standards on par with all the other browsers. Both moves would significantly benefit Opera both in market share and because they would not have to try to write a noncompliant mode for their browser to deal with all the pages designed to work with IE instead of standards and there would no longer be such a barrier to companies looking to switch browsers. Note, Opera said nothing about forcing MS to ship a version without IE, that was just other people's assumption based upon the EU's failed attempt at remedying the media player market.
Are they really arguing that new computers should ship with no internet browser what so ever?
No. That's just something people who don't know what they're talking about and who such a ruling would affect keep mentioning. Ignore them. It makes no sense to anyone who even slightly understands antitrust law and this case.
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Opera's complaint specifically addressed the fact that MS's abuse has resulted in a huge portion of the Web no longer being standards compliant and that this was part of MS's intention as revealed by their internal memos. I suspect Opera hopes for several things possibly including, Windows shipping with multiple browsers and MS being forced to make IE standards compliant and supporting a reasonable level of new standards on par with all the other browsers. Both moves would significantly benefit Opera both in market share and because they would not have to try to write a noncompliant mode for their browser to deal with all the pages designed to work with IE instead of standards and there would no longer be such a barrier to companies looking to switch browsers.
Firefox or Apple with Safari didnt need a lawsuit. They are doing fine. They are standard compliant.
And IE keeps loosing market shares.
It looks like Opera is convinced that their product is the best, and its only Microsoft fault if they are not on everybody's desktop.
But maybe it has to with the fact that their browser wasn't free for a long time.
And maybe they are just not that good, maybe their product is not much better compared to the other ones, or maybe their Marketing failed.. who knows?
Maybe they di
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox or Apple with Safari didnt need a lawsuit. They are doing fine. They are standard compliant. And IE keeps loosing[sic] market shares.
First, there is no lawsuit, just a compliant about a violation of criminal law. It is more akin to reporting a robbery to the cops than suing someone over a dispute. Second is the question of if IE losing market share as rapidly as it should in a free market or if it is being propped up. Is IE significantly better than Opera, enough to justify it's 70% market share even with its technological inferiority? If it wasn't bundled with Windows would it have that large of share? If MS had not intentionally broken standards to create IE only Web pages would it have that much market share?
I'd also like to address your assertion that Firefox and Safari are standards compliant. They mostly are, but they also spent millions creating work arounds so they can handle non-standards compliant pages such as MS schemed to create as a way to harm competitors. These aren't even facts in doubt as they were established when the US investigated then convicted them of this same crime... the crime they never stopped committing.
It looks like Opera is convinced that their product is the best, and its only Microsoft fault if they are not on everybody's desktop.
No, it looks like Opera wants a fair fight. After all, if IE is a better browser users will pick it over Opera, right? Demanding other companies obey the law is not asking for favoritism.
And maybe they are just not that good, maybe their product is not much better compared to the other ones, or maybe their Marketing failed.. who knows?
Nobody, because the free market was not allowed to judge because MS broke the law. All they're asking for is the chance to fight on even ground so users or OEMs can pick what they think is best instead of having a default and a Web full of pages that only work in one browser.
Maybe they didnt realize that a browser product by itself has little value for the end user (not enough value to pay for it in any case). And that its all about the devices and the content.
Current browsers don't have a lot to offer, but that's because current Web pages are still using decade old technologies to display pages because one particular browser with most of the market has refused to implement any new technologies that might allow users to have a Web capable of making Windows less essential. If IE were to disappear tomorrow replaced by any other browser or combination, the Web would suddenly leap forward technologically and you could run Web apps, view video and audio using standards, develop Web pages in half the time, and use vector graphics to deliver better quality graphics using less bandwidth. MS's criminal actions are more than inconveniencing Opera, they are crippling the Web to keep user locked into Windows.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
You're on crack...
The fact that the IE market share is declining is enough to demonstrate to reasonable people that the public IS aware that there are alternatives to using IE, and they ARE able to use these alternatives.
I've read your posts in this thread, and your whining is incredible annoying. You compare Microsoft's web browser to a murderer killing people.
You also repeat over and over that Microsoft is keeping us 8 years behind in website technology. That's a load of crap. Who added the non-standard features to their browser that makes AJAX possible?
It was the ubiquity of a browser included in Windows that opened up the web to most of the world. People now realize that there are other browsers available, and they are branching out, no problem.
If Internet Explorer blocked people from downloading other browsers, I would see the point. But otherwise it's just a bunch of complaining from a few also-rans.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Informative)
And maybe they are just not that good, maybe their product is not much better compared to the other ones, or maybe their Marketing failed.. who knows?
Okay, please step AWAY from the Kool Aid slowly.
.jpg file and then ONLY being able to open it again using Adobe Acrobat.
It's not about taking IE away from people at all. The real issue here is to make IE as compliant as the other browsers, thereby making a lot of other Microsoft products work on browsers OTHER than Microsoft. Here is an example:
Microsoft Sharepoint is a totally browser driven application that lets corporate people make business webpages, lists and office type content. Now, if it's totally browser driven, it should work in any browser right? Going a step further, the advertising on the product itself says "compliant with other browsers. Some loss of user experience may occur" - you know what that means? It means that if you use a browser other than IE to try to access this product, nothing works. Not even the navigation works. It's like buying Photoshop, touching up a
The point of this who case isn't to stop IE, it's to make use of the browser guidelines that are developed properly, so that if something "works through a browser" it can continue along quite happily no matter what the browser - as long as the browser is compliant. The problem is that folks like Firefox are playing by the rules - and suffering for it.
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Opera's complaint specifically addressed the fact that MS's abuse has resulted in a huge portion of the Web no longer being standards compliant and that this was part of MS's intention as revealed by their internal memos.
What would happen if Microsoft pulled a "standard compliant" IE (or at least one that matched Firefox for complaintness) out of their ass? It would force an all new attack position for the anit-MS folks...
Nope, not going to happen...
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What would happen if Microsoft pulled a "standard compliant" IE (or at least one that matched Firefox for complaintness) out of their ass?
Web developers and users would rejoice and the Web would leap forward technologically allowing for many new applications and uses of the Web with a lot less effort and bandwidth. If only
It would force an all new attack position for the anit-MS folks...
If MS stopped breaking this law in this case, gee we'd have to complain about all their other criminal behaviors. Your postulation is like asking what if the mafia stopped extorting money from shopkeepers in the Bronx, then the cops wold have to arrest them one of their other criminal enterprises.
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If MS stopped breaking this law in this case...
I don't think that has been completely established yet, the EU is not done...
No, the case is not done, but it is open and shut. The US convicted them of the same action under nearly identical laws. All the findings of fact are pretty much done from the previous antitrust conviction in the EU. I haven't heard a single legal expert question that they will be convicted, just what the remedy will be.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Interesting)
If Opera thinks that unbundling IE in the European market is going to make the web more standards compliant, they are dreaming. The only thing that'd make the web standards compliant is if somebody policed it and brought punishment to sites that didn't fall in line. Good luck with that, btw.
I don't think anyone is under that illusion although frankly, anything that reduces IE's market share will make the Web more standards compliant since more developers will have incentive to code to the standards. I think they're hoping more for a standards body or group of Web bowser developers to be appointed to making sure IE meets standards and any complaints about standards noncompliance in IE are addressed in a timely manner. Who knows if this will be part of the IE's remedy or not.
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No, they're arguing that OEMs should be able to pick what browser they want installed. And no, you don't "need" a broswer at install time - most ISPs supply CDs and many of those contain browsers. Since there's not a whole lot of point in having a web browser if you can't see the web, this would not appear to be undue hardship.
(This ignores all the other ways you can get Firefox, IceWeazel, Opera, Lynx, or other browsers. FTP still works, you've an e-mail client - Outlook - that is quite capable of receivin
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Funny)
You present this as though it's a viable option.. How many people know the ftp address to download firefox?
Only you, is the answer and only because you looked it up to prove me wrong.
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Do the following on a newly installed Windows:
- click on the Start button
- click on "Run"
- type in "cmd", click "ok"
- in the black Window that opens, type "ftp", press the Enter key
Now please tell me, what Programm you just started?
Yes, an FTP client independent from IE, but available on EVERY standard Windows installation since Windows 95.
(Ok,I haven't done that on Vista or Windows 7, but I don't expect MS to have removed the FTP client.)
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I know, that's how the modified version of XP works for Europe, though I have yet to hear of anyone actually using it.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Insightful)
Most likely it will just ship with a second or third browser installed.
And how will Microsoft select the alternatives? If they were forced to include other browsers, every dinky browser author and company would be pining to get their browser included in the alternatives list, threatening lawsuits if Microsoft doesn't comply. It would also mean that, since the software is supplied by Microsoft as part of Windows, Microsoft has to keep it updated and has to accept a certain level of liability.
The real solution to this is for Microsoft to allow OEMs like Dell, HP, etc to include other browsers on new machines. This would give users the same choices they have with regards to other bundled software and it also leaves the market open, for example, to allow Mozilla or Opera to pay to have their software installed on all Dell machines. This would also prevent Microsoft from needing to keep the first-party bundled browser up-to-date with service packs and updates.
The only downside is that people who buy retail/OEM versions of Windows will still need to use IE to download their choice browser, but I still fail to see how that impacts anything. If the complete failure of Windows N has taught us anything it should be that customers really don't want a crippled out-of-the-box operating system.
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Microsoft wouldn't- the computer manufacturer would. It would be up to HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc to choose what to bundle. Including the choice of IE. The point being that the browsers would compete in a fair market, rather than IE being installed by default and as the default app.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Funny)
Installing "Windows 7" Step 6 of 10:
Picking which web browser is right for you. If you need help visit us at www.microsoft.com.
1.) Internet Explorer 8
DEFAULT CHOICE
RECOMMENDED CHOICE
2.) Other (Advanced)
(Only recommend for Advanced Users)
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"...ship a version of Windows without any web browser. So you won't be able to download firefox either!"
that's not really what this is about
Desktop machines need a browser
AFAIK, the EU Commission wants an OEM version of windows without IE, so OEMs can pre-load different browsers (as per customer demand)
This is about the unfair advantage MS has in online and search markets due to IE being tied to windows
IE is defaulted to MSN as it's homepage, probably (although, obviously I'm guessing) as part of OEMs contr
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:4, Funny)
Of course you can download an alternative browser without having another browser to do it.
> ftp -A ftp.ussg.iu.edu
ftp> cd pub/opera/win/963/en
ftp> binary
ftp> hash
ftp> get Opera_963_en_Setup.exe
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for Opera_963_en_Setup.exe (5619080 byte
s).
###
226 File send OK.
ftp: 5619080 bytes received in 112.06Seconds 50.14Kbytes/sec.
ftp> quit
Although this too will fail once the EU decides that Microsoft's inclusion of an FTP client is anti-competitive and asks for it to be removed too.
Re:Slow Justice is No Justice (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the major point is that the same rules should not apply to Microsoft because they have a monopoly position in the OS market (or at least a lot of people see them that way).
I agree with most of your post, but your wording here is a bit misleading. Everyone has to follow the same laws. It is illegal for anyone to tie a monopolized product to a product in another pre-exiting market. That applies to MS and Apple and Sony and every other company and these laws have been enforced against many companies and all these companies have lawyers who told them this long ago. Microsoft can't bundle Windows and IE and when they did it they knew they were breaking the law. Apple may or may not be able to tie iPods to the iTunes Music Store, dependent only on whether the iPod has enough influence to constitute a monopoly and the EU has been investigating that very possibility.
With a company with offerings in as many categories as Microsoft has, it's very easy for them to tie strong, popular products to weak or new ones. To an extent this is their prerogative, as any manufacturer can make their products work best in their own environment.
Note, this behavior becomes illegal as soon as the "strong" product moves into the realm of having monopoly influence (usually around 70% market share). For MS, there is no question that Windows is a monopoly since the EU courts have already made that determination in previous cases.
I agree that it would be absurd to have an OS without a web browser at this point, but calling for equal treatment of different OS players would require that the playing field was level, which is not the case.
There is no technical reason why Windows can't ship without a browser or engine and leave it to OEMs to pick the browser and plug-in engine they desire. This is quite different from end users getting a computer without a browser pre-installed, which no one (outside of the clueless) has suggested.
Stupid.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time they did this over the "media player", after months of laywers and stuff, Microsoft finally agreed to come out with a version of the OS which lacked the Media player.
And the verdict?
Nobody wanted it.
If you don't want IE, do what I do. Just don't run it.
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The problem was that they allowed two versions of the OS distribution. Obviously, most will opt for more features if the financial difference is small enough. If media player had to be downloaded separately for any version, then there would have been a difference. If this new case again allows for two versions without a significant monetary difference, then it will end in the same way: a dead duck.
Anyway, it drains a good amount of money out of MS each time they have to comply. That has got to hurt in the l
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It's more like saying this:
Me and you have a stationary business each. We supply people with stationary for their brand new desks.
You only make the stationary. I make both stationary and desks. Seeing as everybody wants my desks, I have an unfair advantage to selling my stationary, which is actually inferior to yours simply because the people are buying my desks.
However, here the situation is slightly more complex even than enforcing a free market, because the adhesion of browsers like Firefo
Re:Stupid.. (Score:4, Informative)
The same applies for the proposed ruling about IE, it'll especially work when there's a price to pay for that eternally security challenged browser.
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But competing media players and browsers are free. Why force MS CHARGE users for inferior products? They give very basic functionality, yet they are crap, so they are free.
A few eons ago - in computer time, i.e. less than 20 calendar years - the basic utilities that were considered part of the OS were a file manager perhaps a paint application etc. Well, in the age of the internet and media an OS HAS TO provide some basic functionality in these areas. How else are you going to download Opera without IE (or
Re:Stupid.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Noone wanted it because the version without Media Player cost exactly the same as the one with. So which OEM in his right mind would put that on a PC? Which shop would stock it?
The EU made a mistake in not forcing MS to lower the pricing on the Windows without Media Player.
How much cheaper could Windows really be if your purchase price wasn't sponsoring the programming teams that are working on the 'free' browser, virus scanner, defragmenter, backup program, touch interface, fax and scan interface, optical burn program, media player, movie maker, speech recognition, java clone, flash knockoff and all the other crap that you get with Vista? None of these programs are particularly good, so let's just see some Win32/MFC/.NET libraries for say 10$ and you can keep the rest of the crap. There are better alternatives which are truly free.
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Have you ever wondered WHY it is that every company trying to compete with Microsoft's bundled media player, bundled operating system, bundled... etc. has to give their software away for free?
Does it help if I give you the hint that these companies used to be able to charge for the software before microsoft started giving it away for free with their operating system that has 90%+ market share?
Re:Stupid.. (Score:4, Interesting)
a) it had the same price
That's because Windows Media Player is free [microsoft.com].
b) they not only removed the Windows Media Player, but also Windows Media Codecs
Good grief. They get forced to remove WMP and then people get mad when then they go and remove WMP. When you uninstall Quicktime are you shocked to learn the MP4 and other Apple codecs are also removed? Besides, they're free too [microsoft.com].
The whole point was to give consumers "choice" by making them install WMP themselves. Don't ask for something and then cry when you get it.
Re:Stupid.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because Windows Media Player is free [microsoft.com].
"This download is available to customers running genuine Microsoft Windows"
So no, it's not free. You just don't pay for it because it's incorporated into the cost of the Windows licence.
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One reason we can all enjoy media on Linux.
Removing IE poses one very significant problem (Score:3, Funny)
How am I supposed to download Firefox then?!!? FTP? c'mon!
Re:Removing IE poses one very significant problem (Score:4, Informative)
How am I supposed to download Firefox then?!!? FTP? c'mon!
Go back to the US antitrust lawsuit.
The whole point was that the OEMs decide the middleware.
So you buy a Smell(TM) brand computer and they decide to put Opera on it instead of MSIE, you use Opera to get firefox.
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What if I build by own systems?
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What if I build by own systems?
Then you are tech savvy enough to use this.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/ [mozilla.org]
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Besides, you don't need a complete browser to do something like a get command.
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I had to do that once for a customer while remoted into their machine. They had a virus on their system that shut down IE as soon as the user tried to download any kind of file. The irony of this did not escape me.
(I wish I was making this up, it would've made the call go much faster.)
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Can IE be removed? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Microsoft already solved this problem. Look up the IBrowser COM interface that Microsoft designed way back when they introduced COM. It's specifically designed to allow an application to get an implementation of a browser object and use it to render HTML pages without knowing or needing to know exactly what implementation it got. Their specific example was in fact using IBrowser to create an application that could use either Netscape or IE transparently depending on which one the user had installed. This, o
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll tell you what I'd do if I were them. I'd release "Windows Desktop Core". It would be like Windows Server Core - comes up to a desktop with a single command prompt window on it. Sell it for 1/3 the price - no IE, or explorer.exe either - maybe that will open up a market for alternative desktops.
Then ask the EC "what now, bitches?"
not relevant (Score:2, Insightful)
IE was a massive money pit for Microsoft, and its only purpose was to protect Windows as the dominant application platform. It worked.
But with the rise of Web 2.0 and hand helds like Blackberry and iPhone, Windows is no longer the dominant application platform -- no one is actually building applications for Windows anymore, as far as startups are concerned, it's a "dead" platform.
Therefore wh
Clueless (Score:2)
Core Component (Score:2)
Last i heard IE was a core component in the GUI subsystem of windows..
Makes no sense. (Score:2)
This makes no sense. Even Linux computers file-system browsers (e.g., konqueror) are sometimes browsers. Microsoft has integrated "Explorer" (explorer.exe) to be both a filesystem and web browser. Microsoft has also, by now, made it relatively easy to not use Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express, etc., at all. It's easy to change the program defaults.
According to wikipedia, IE has about 68% of the browser "market" share (odd to call it a "market" since they are typically free pieces of software)
So.... (Score:2)
Without IE on the CD, how will I download my alternative browser of choice? 99% of the times I install Windows, the first thing I do (after patching) is hit getfirefox.com.
Or are they planning on forcing MS to package installers for Opera, Safari, Firefox, Flock, etc. on the CD? Couldn't this backfire on the alternatives since they're updated a lot more frequently than MS prints new OEM/Retail versions of Windows? Or will Billy Bob even notice that his version of Firefox is over a year out-of-date when h
State sponsored monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take these kind of actions seriously when: .doc format anymore (although with OO this is less of a problem)
- I don't need the Media Player for listening to state sponsored radio programs or television shows.
- Local governments don't rely on the
- All government sites run fine in standard compliant browsers
- Applications (like tax applications) are available for a freely available operating system at the same time as Windows
- Schools are pushed to learn people IT skills, not Microsoft skills
- Government and semi-government rely less on Microsoft only products and stops buying billions worth of licensing from Microsoft
Currently it feels like they are slapping Microsoft with one hand while feeding it with another. OK, since the slapping probably also means that Microsoft has to give some money back, it makes a slight bit of sense. But currently it is not a nice situation at all.
At least my bank and the public transport sector are platform independent, so we're getting to our money and somewhere.
1996 called.. (Score:4, Interesting)
they want their antitrust claim back.
Seriously, Firefox is up to more than 20% marketshare. IE doesn't have a monopoly.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Enough crap... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
..imagine buy a new PC with Windows and not having a browser?
Okay I imagined it. Now how does that have anything to do with this article? Microsoft doesn't bundle DVD drives with Windows, but somehow those seem to be in new computers I buy. What makes you think Sony is going to ship computers without browsers if MS is banned from bundling IE and Windows?
Those who don't like IE can use a different browser and many do.
But many can't because they have to access IE only Web pages. Those pages exist because MS broke the law and bundled IE. Not only that, MS did that intentionally (as revealed by internal memos) as a way to keep peopl
Agreed (Score:3, Informative)
They should also take notice that XP N (XP with no media player) had next to zero sales. Part of the reason is that apps wouldn't work without it. Why? Goes like this:
So media player, and IE as well, are actually split in two. There's the actual app you run. That doesn't really do much. It's just a user interface. You can get different ones. Media Player Classic would be a media player example. The actual work is then done by a separate set of DLLs that anything can call. So the media player stuff is the sy
Rediculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is the border between something being a part of an OS and things that aren't? Next thing will be for them to want Microsoft to remove the Text editor, the file manager, the GUI and the Image Viewer from Windows, leaving you with a command prompt when you install it.
I mean, as much as I dislike using Windows, putting myself in the position of a "I don't know anything about computers and don't really care to learn, I just want them to work." type person, I'd feel really pissed off about not having a browser installed on my system when I buy it. I, as a Linux user, like to choose what is on my system though. =)
Anyway, I think what the EC should do instead of making Microsoft remove IE from its OS is to start a campaign to advertise alternative browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome...etc). Has there been a similar suit against Macintosh?
Re: (Score:2)
Windows can load whatever it wants on to their Operating Systems. What right does anyone else have to tell them what they can and cannot load? If someone else want's to use Opera, have them download it. It's not like Microsoft is stopping you from doing it.
Its more that their free product stops people from looking for alternatives.
Not me though, and not, I suspect, anyone with half a brain, but there we are.
Personally I think this is a stupid idea, as was the removal of media player. A more sensible idea would have been to ask that download shortcuts to alternatives be placed on the desktop by default or something.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I think that they should keep the back-end rendering engine (perhaps open the API so it can be replaced with something more secure and standards compliant)
Then they could drop IE as a bundled application, instead provide a very small cut-down browser (like notepad is to word processors) that didn't have javascript, or support for hosting browser objects or activex or java or anything like that. You could download FF or Opera using that, and even use it to safely surf the web :)
But I reckon all t
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
They are an operating system monopoly, and they can and DO leverage that to create unfair advantages in new markets.
Monopolies have to play by different rules. That is what gives the governments the right to tell them what they can and cannot load.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people are there buying computers who would think of thier computer as complete without an internet browser? Is MS evil for catering to this need?
On a related note, will Apple have to stop including Safari with OS X?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not MS lover, but really, at what point does this stop? What if a company with a desire to litigate decides they want to enter the utilities market, but are hampered by the preloaded utilities available in Windows (defrag, search, etc.).
It only applies to pre-existing separate markets. That is, someone has to be selling or in some way making money selling that component separately at the time MS starts bundling it.
Does MS have to strip out features every times someone calls foul? How far will it go... Where's the line?
Does no one learn the basics of antitrust law in Econ anymore?
How many people are there buying computers who would think of thier computer as complete without an internet browser? Is MS evil for catering to this need?
MS doesn't sell computers. MS sells computer components and OEMs build complete systems. It's like if Nvidia managed to monopolize the graphics card market, then started making LCDs integrated with the video card and required all computer manufacturers to buy them as a
Re: (Score:2)
Sure they can, but they can also be slapped down afterwards.
If the governments don't tell them to stop doing something, then they keep moving forward. If they do tell them to stop, they just appeal and again, keep moving forward.
Either way, Microsoft wins more market share and long term cash flow.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they CAN, but other people tell them what to do, because other people want the world to be a certain way and want to tell individuals, groups, and businesses how to act so the world is more shaped, more in-tune to their liking.
Although I suspect the EU is just trying to milk money out of MS like they did in the past. Extremely wealthy American company, doesn't hurt them so much...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No Windows cannot load whatever it wants to on their Operating Systems.
er... yes it can.
It's still an open platform that runs any code you throw at it, provided it's compatible. The claim that Windows itself is a monopoly is complete and utter bollocks.
Re: (Score:2)
They're basically blaming the largest game in town for people's own non-education or laziness. That's really what it's all about.
The left tends to scare me because a lot of what they do (not like the right doesn't do this either) is try to engineer people or force their hands so they attitudes and actions center around making sure all their personal wants and dreams come true.
Re: (Score:2)
Now I'm waiting for a clearer decision on the sale of hardware that's not available without Windows installed...
Re: (Score:2)
>What right does anyone else have to tell them what they can and cannot load?
Why shouldn't some goverments be able to stop a raging monopolist from leveraging one product (operating system) in order to systematically destroy a market for other products (web browsers, media players, and so on).
>It's not like Microsoft is stopping you from doing it.
They are not stopping their users to use a competing product. They are leveraging their operating system monopoly in order to make the competition in other m
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I really, really hope Windows never, ever loads what it wants onto its operating system. If you thought users loading viruses and trojans was common but stupid (and easily blocked), can you imagine what would happen if the OS kernel decides that it damn well wants some malware and that you've no business telling it not ro?
Oh, you meant Microsoft! Actually, legally, no they can't. They may not use a monopoly in one environment to impose a de-facto monopoly in another market. That is a crime, and rightfully so. Monopolies that try to seize other markets are damn dangerous because you rapidly lack these supposed alternatives. Netscape discovered that one, when Microsoft "knifed the baby" (in Microsoft's own words). Alternative browsers ONLY exist today in meaningful numbers because IE6 was a mess and IE7 took too long to come to market, due to Microsoft having no browser team, having dismembered it. (If you see any suspicious-looking concrete structures with arms sticking out near the Redmond campus, that's probably them.) If Microsoft had kept with IE, then IE would be all that existed. Microsoft would long-since have fixed IIS to never serve a competing browser, and IE would have long-since been fixed to be so non-compliant with standards that IE-capable pages won't work anywhere else. (Actually, that last one is almost the case today.)
No, Microsoft has no business distorting the markets like that, creating monocultures of their choice, exterminating competitors (I suspect at least one MS exec is actually a dalek) and forcing people to only buy what it sells. You're seeing this with the anti-virus market today. MS got information under the false pretenses of working with anti-virus vendors on how the products worked and the data used, then used that information to create a version that it provided ready-installed. Nobody is going to buy software for a few hundred dollars that is not that different from the software that is provided already, which means those vendors are being squeezed out of existance. I expect that, by the time Windows 7 is fully released, very few if any of the current AV suppliers will still exist. Microsoft will have crushed the bones of their business and squeezed the life-blood out of the remains until nothing identifiable without a scanning electron microscope remained.
Now, I would agree with those who say Microsoft is not technically evil, just very very good at what it does. In the same way Nyarlothotep is. Indeed, they're probably related. Bill Gates probably has an actual copy of the Necronomican and his palace, err, home, is suspiciously close to where you might expect Cthulhu to hang out. Not evil, just very very powerful and very very insane.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If Ubuntu shipped on the vast majority of personal computers, then yes it might.
What's the legal difference?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
34. Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. First, Microsoft's share of the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems is extremely large and stable. Second, Microsoft's dominant market share is protected by a high barrier to entry. Third, and largely as a result of that barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a commercially viable alternative to Windows.
Tim S
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about the Firefox I get with Ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Ubuntu don't make Firefox, I doubt it.
I think it would be more accurate as "Since Ubuntu isn't a convicted monopolist, I doubt it."
Monopolies operate under different rules. Comparing monopolies to non-monopolies is just stupid, whether its the Apple-Safari or Ubuntu-Firefox bundles, it doesn't matter. Those aren't monopolies so the rules are completely different.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, to mention a few of many you get Konqueror and Opera tossed in as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am frankly shocked and disgusted that Microsoft wants IE to be shipped with their operating system. They have a huge market advantage, as consumers overwhelmingly choose to buy Microsoft over Linux or anything else for whatever reason.
I demand that defrag, the default media player, debug and administration utilities, calculator, MS Paint, wordpad and notepad, the unzip utility, the cd burning utility, and any and all default drivers be stripped from Windows distributions to create a more even, more egali
Re: (Score:2)
One major difference, though: while Apple, KDE and most Linux distributions include various browsers, none of them force the installation of any of them nor prevent their uninstallation, nor do they force the use of those browsers for certain things even after the user's installed an alternative.
And no, no operating system needs a web browser to run. A user may need a web browser for their day-to-day application needs, but the operating system doesn't in general need it to run other programs. And even where
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:4, Interesting)
And this applies only to a monopoly: Apple's share of the home or office computer market is small enough that they can get away with bundling a browser. And with any version of Linux you can remove the browser and the OS still works fine (although using KDE without Konqueror could be just a bit frustrating...).
As for the browser being a necessary part of the OS, I don't agree. The way I see things the browser is just another application, just like a game, word processor, database handler or what have you. Granted, the browser will be using the OS to communicate with the outside world, but it isn't (or at least shouldn't be) an integral part of the OS.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)