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You're missing (or willfully ignoring) a really big point: Microsoft is a monopoly that has been tried and convicted of abusing that monopoly position (remember, it's not illegal to have dominant market share; it's what they do from that position that is). This is not the same as Opera not supporting Silverlight or WMV. Not even a little. Really.

The reason the internet works is because it is based on open protocols. Think about this. The dominant operating system vendor also supplies the world's dominant web browser (remember that monopoly abuse I mentioned?). Once the market for IE was secured, Microsoft disregarded the open protocols that makes the web work and let the browser stagnate for many, many years. IE7 is an improvement over 6, to be sure, but the open standards that the web depends on are still only being paid lip service. This is a huge problem for companies like Opera whose business depends on these standards being standard.

So yes, litigation is a viable option. In fact, it might be the only true motivation Microsoft for get its act together.

Microsoft is a monopoly convicted of abusing their monopoly position. That is a fact.

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm

I didn't say anything about going out of business and neither did Opera. Opera is saying Microsoft is a monopoly and they are abusing that monopoly position.

I said nothing about Open Source. Nothing. Open, in the way I used it means that the spec, be it HTML, CSS, CSS2, ECMA Script or whatever, is open. You don't have to pay to get the spec. You don't have to license the spec. Anyone can implement it. It is open.

If you're sick of companies litigating to solve their issues, that's cool. I agree that it would be nicer for true competition to solve these problems. BUT, when one of the competitors is a convicted monopolist (and their monopoly position is unchanged), there is no fair competition. In such cases, I can understand litigation as an option.

Edited 2007-12-13 19:46

Almafeta: Microsoft has been found to be a monopoly by courts in the US and Europe. That's a fact.

Monopoly has specific legal meaning, as well as a specific meaning in economics. As we are discussing a lawsuit, the legal definition of monopoly is clearly the proper one to use. It is a fact, not opinion, that courts have found Microsoft to hold a monopoly in desktop operating systems.

You can stick your fingers in your ears and shout "LA LA LA" as much as you want, but your personal fantasy definition of monopoly simply doesn't apply to this story. Monopoly is a term of art used in the law and economics, and those are the definitions that apply.

an OPEN protocol is one that has been publically, and officially, published. Unlike, say a CLOSED protocol like the pre XML Microsoft Office File Formats. Or the informal 'Microsoft HTML'.

OPEN does not mean FREE, both in monetary and GNU sense. Open source people often don't see the difference.

Opera can't outdo IE with being compliant to the standards. Standard compliance is something that web developers deal with, not the end users. Standard compliance is a something that increases the costs of the particular product. It is similar to environment protection regulations compliance. Unfortunately, one does not get fined for violating the standards, unlike the environment protection.

Ignore them, they are paid by MS to troll forums and advocate for MS. Think about it, no one is that ignorant to not be able to see the obvious.

...and here I was, thinking that it was becoming unfashionable to tilt at that particular windmill. How silly of me.

Which standards they should support then? I mean it seems that every month or so we have new standards. Not even Opera meets all standards why should IE. Besides shouldn't the responsible of using standards be in Website creators? And who should decide which standards are required, I hope not W3C.

Since there is no standard called Internet or WWW, whole thing of saying that you should support open standards is pretty weak.

"This is a huge problem for companies like Opera whose business depends on these standards being standard."

Smells like crap to me. Biggest problem for Opera is that web browser is free nowdays and Thank God for that.

"Which standards they should support then?

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.h...

I mean it seems that every month or so we have new standards".

Nope. Every 5-10 years there are updates to the standards. That's it.

"Not even Opera meets all standards why should IE".

Opera passes the ACID test. So should IE.

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/acid/
http://www.webstandards.org/2006/07/20/acid2-and-opera-9-clarificat...

"Besides shouldn't the responsible of using standards be in Website creators?"

Absolutely. As long as the browser supports web standards. Otherwise the page will be broken.

"And who should decide which standards are required, I hope not W3C".

Yes, the W3C, of which Microsoft takes part.

"Since there is no standard called Internet or WWW, whole thing of saying that you should support open standards is pretty weak".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium

Opera should support a Microsoft standard Silverlight, WMA ? Huh?

Microsoft should support an international standard HTML, CSS.

"If they're not good enough, you don't sue them, you outdo them. You'd think Opera would understand this principle."

As far as I'm concerned, Opera has been "outdoing" Microsoft's Internet Explorer for years. Who's been coming up with the majority of the new "features" in Web browsers these days? No, not Firefox--they can be credited for bring such innovations to the masses. IE sure as hell is not the innovator (more of the opposite--remember its years-long stagnation?), and IMO, is one of the worst browsers you can use. Opera has been the main innovator here, and I would say that in a way, they "outdo" both IE and Firefox--being the first browser to support many newer, useful features.

Have you ever heared of gttps://addons.mozilla.org ?

Have you ever heared of gttps://addons.mozilla.org ?

Extensions are poor copies of Opera's built-in features, that break across new versions. The Mozilla Corporation isn't even able to bundle Firefox with all these extensions, the used space would be ridiculous compared to Opera. Not long ago, Firefox's setup file was 3x bigger than Opera's and provided 1/10 of Opera's features.

The funny thing is that Opera is just as bloated codewise as Firefox is. Try visiting a website with Flash applets and one with Java applets and see how both browsers run amok. Firefox on Flash, and Opera on Java (actually the latter browser uses more memory in regard to java applets - Firefox however is a joke in regard to Flash).

"Have you ever heared of gttps://addons.mozilla.org ?"

Yes, I personally use a couple of the extensions and the BlueQute theme myself. Almost all--if not all--of the "extensions" at that site are "unofficial" (ie. unsupported by and have nothing to do with Mozilla themselves, other than the fact that they're made for their browser). Some are even known to cause bugs and/or instability of the entire browser when used with certain other extensions. So what's your point?

Sure, I can thank Firefox's extension developers for Adblock, which Opera finally added partially to their browser after some pressure, and NoScript is another nice unofficial add-on that still seems to be exclusive to Mozilla-based browsers, but Opera was there with Mouse Gestures years ago. As for Download Statusbar... I use that one too, and it's quite nice, but Opera's downloads-in-a-tab method also works good. Other extensions? There's not really anything else out there of any use to me.

Still... these extensions' features were NOT thought of and designed by Mozilla themselves, so I wouldn't credit Firefox itself for these features. Thank the extension developers. The credit Mozilla deserves is making Firefox with extendability in mind, and as I said previously, for making others' innovations mainstream. Oh yeah, and for getting Microsoft off their lazy, greedy asses during the IE stall and getting the Web moving again.

This is not the same thing at. Who is modding these points up?

Thats an interesting argument. On one hand you can argue that Firefox is succeeding despite IE being bundled with Windows. On the other hand you could argue that Firefox has failed because at certain points when it was head and shoulders above IE in quality/abilities, it still hasnt gained more than 20% market share. Which kind of proves that IE is where it is BECAUSE it is tied to Windows.

Yeah, but good luck proving Firefox is better than IE, especially to non-technical judges. "Better" is highly subjective, I know several people that prefer IE, precisely because they consider it "better". "Better" doesn't necessarily mean "Better features" or "More secure". Anyway, good luck to Opera, I hope they win the judgement.

You're going on the wrong track here. Nobody will care which browser is "better". What is being discussed is the fact that Microsoft has a monopoly with Windows and takes advantage of that by bundling Internet Explorer (and Windows Explorer) in a manner that makes it unfair.

It is unfair that one piece of software should be included with Windows when others are not. What makes it especially unfair in the case of Explorer is that you can't remove it. You cannot take either Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer off a Windows system. This makes any browser or file manager manufacturer entitled to accuse them of abusing their monopoly. It's unfair competition.

Someone said something about Calculator and other pieces of software. It's not the same thing, because you can remove Calculator and install a competing alternative. An OEM can bundle another Calculator by default if they want. But try as they might, they cannot unbundle Windows and Internet Explorer. For both technical and political reasons (ie. Microsoft would take their head off). That make Microsoft ripe for this kind of lawsuit.

Edited 2007-12-13 22:09

"You're going on the wrong track here. Nobody will care which browser is "better". What is being discussed is the fact that Microsoft has a monopoly with Windows and takes advantage of that by bundling Internet Explorer (and Windows Explorer) in a manner that makes it unfair.

It is unfair that one piece of software should be included with Windows when others are not. What makes it especially unfair in the case of Explorer is that you can't remove it. You cannot take either Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer off a Windows system. This makes any browser or file manager manufacturer entitled to accuse them of abusing their monopoly. It's unfair competition."

While the issue you raise is true to a point, you can remove Internet Explorer, not easily however, and not without crippling the system.

However I think that this lawsuit is about something different. And that is that Internet Explorer by not properly implementing open web standards correctly such as HTML, CSS, CSS2 and ECMA script. And because of their dominant position as the default browser used on approximately 80% desktops has created an environment where web developers write sites to display in Microsofts undocumented slightly different versions of HTML, CSS, etc.

So Internet Explorer by not implementing standards correctly and being the most common browser, puts Opera in a position where a large amount of sites just don't work correctly on their browser which is standards compliant (or at least as compliant as anything else that I know of on the market). If I was in their shoes I'd be a little PO'ed too.

If IE correctly implemented standards the web would be a lot nicer place that "Just Works" a whole hell of a lot more than it does now. Not just in terms of more competition but web development would be a not nicer to if we didn't have to support some bastardized protocols changed slightly by Microsoft in order to maintain dominant market position.

Edited 2007-12-14 00:14

You can remove it from the system, but certain things won't function properly (such as the Help System which uses the IE rendering engine [reuse of components is a GOOD thing, isnt it?]). So you can certainly unbundle IE.

There are other components in Windows that are just as hard to "remove", but no one ever goes after those for abuse of monopoly. I've always been curious as to why.

As an Opera user and fan, it saddens me to see Opera do this. Of course, I am able to make a distinction between a company and a product, unlike some people, so it has no effect on my choice to use the Opera browser.

The question is: Can IE be uninstalled and completely removed from the system? If not, Opera has a case.

"The question is: Can IE be uninstalled and completely removed from the system? If not, Opera has a case"

By "Completely removing IE from the system" do you mean removing the dlls that form some of the Win32 api? That would be like demanding that GDI dll be removed or the printer spooler or OLE dlls. 3rd party apps rely on those APIs. Hell, this has been dealt with years ago. If you want to just remove the icon or iexplore.exe, then just delete them.

There's no need to "Remove IE from the system" anyway.
For years now, XP has had the "Set Program Access and Defaults" control panel (which is accessible via Add/Remove Programs control panel) that allows the user to set the default browser, IM client, email client, media player, and JVM. OEMs can also set these to whatever they want. Opera has no case here. If Opera wants OEMs to pre-install Opera then they should make a deal with those OEMs. Opera's already doing this with mobile devices so they should get off their ass and make a deal with PC OEMs to set the "Access and Defaults" default browser settting to Opera.

According to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2 ,
Opera's share is like 0.64%. Firefox's share is 23 times higher. Opera needs to look at itself in the mirror to find out why their share is so low rather than running to big government about it. Then again, the EC does hate Microsoft with a passion, so whining to the EC is probably easier than fixing Opera's problems.

Edited 2007-12-14 19:35

Nothing from IE is a part of Win32 API.

They are extensions to the Win32 API. There is however some parts of the windows shell that has been moved inside IE-specific DLL's and vice versa. This can easily be reversed (as has been proven several times) and even replaced with non-IE solutions (like Mozilla ActiveX Control) without breaking anything.

There is no reason not to make IE completely removable.

The fact one can use another browser as default browser doesn't mean a thing. IE must be completely uninstallable. But what can one expect from a company that violates the Danish copyright law (Bekendtgørelse af lov om ophavsret - Lovbekendtgørelse. nr. 763 af 30. juni 2006) ?

It that comes up, MS will likely point out that it's a conscious design choice made by the page designer, not imposed by any software MS designs. (It'd be a different story if, say, IIS served pages in formats that only IE could view.)

It's possible to design a page, given any common browser, so that it only renders on that particular broswer. 'Only renders on Firefox' is fairly common on the tech sites I try to read...

Only renders on Firefox

Do you have an example. I have never noticed such a site. I have seen pages stating "designed for" or something similiar but never Only

I have. There are pages that block you if you use Internet Explorer or Opera and then you see the Google Ad with Firefox asking to download Firefox with the Google bar. These are jerks that are no better than the IE-only junkies.

Link? It's best to give concrete examples.

"'Only renders on Firefox' is fairly common on the tech sites I try to read..." [Citation needed]

"It's possible to design a page, given any common browser, so that it only renders on that particular broswer."

uh... that's what the standards are for, so that shouldn't happen

"Some sites work properly only in IE, especially here in Italy.

And.. Microsoft is responsible for that?"

Yes. Microsoft designed IE with lock-in in mind. IE has proprietary implementation of XHTML, JS and CSS and its implementation of web standards of full of bugs. Then of course it doesn't work on browsers that are tied to web standards. How do you compete in such a situation?

Nobody is putting a gun to the web developers to adopt such second class technologies.

Not a gun, but a pink slip.

"Nobody is putting a gun to the web developers to adopt such second class technologies".

But they do, and if Microsoft were more responsible, it would have followed strictly web standards and Opera wouldn't be at 0.5% market share after 10 years, although being the best Internet suite around.

When you have a monopoly and abuse like that, you kill your competitors, and then you stop development, this is what happened with IE 6 that had 95%+ market share and Microsoft only woke up to resume development when they began to lose market share. More competition = More choice = Better quality for the end user.

False! I remember a while ago working for a company and redesigning their web site. I was developping using CSS and Firefox and when the boss saw me testing with Firefox it asked me why I was doing so. I told him that IE was so broken that I always develop first for Firefox (strict XHTML and CSS) and than I'd fix for IE. The response I got was that IE was used by more than 99% of their customers, that I was wasting time working with standard and that I should use Frontpage. Well, this guy was a total nazi and he decided almost every element of design the site had. The results: something awful (www.saniten.ca) Just don't laught at me, this is the ugliest site I ever designed. I wonder if there's any client who told him his site was so ugly.

So to gets to the point : Yes, there is people who puts you a gun on the head (get fired) because you don't want to design only for IE. Sometime it cost more to get inter-operability. The first thing that comes to my mind : There is a lot of VPN software that rely exclusivily on Active-X applet for authentification.

Propietary implementation? No more than Opera does.

The only problem I know of with XHTML is IE doesn't properly handle a certain content type.

JS there are definitely some quirks with IE, but there are quirks between Opera and Firefox and Safari as well.

CSS is definitely more arguable. They support CSS1 pretty well and CSS2 ok. The problem is with a lot of well known bugs.

That, and their constant attempts to lock the web into their proprietary technologies (Silverlight/C# these days):

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2007/10/open_letter...
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es4-discuss/2007-October/001309.h...

OK, let's take this slowly so that you cannot pretend not to understand. Or are you really that dumb?

Microsoft release a browser that nearly implements HTML/CSS correctly, but is broken in a couple of obvious ways. They release it for free, bundled with the OS, so that people will use it by default. (proper) Web designers design their websites according to standards, but during testing see that IE refuses to display it properly because it is broken. Because of MS pushing IE as the default browser, the website designers break their sites so that they don't display correctly in properly compliant browsers, but do work in IE.
Now if people switch to non-Microsoft products, they will think that the non-MS products are broken, because the sites that they used to view nicely, now look broken, and if MS had written decent software to begin with, this wouldn't be an issue. capisce?

If the problem were actually solved, people wouldn't be so keen on trying to fix it. Again.

Just because an issue is old doesn't mean it isn't still relevant. Some of us have been railing against software patents since well before 1998, for example, and they're still wreaking havoc in the software and services marketplaces.

I remember that lawsuit, it went on for a year or two, then MS were found guilty, threatened with lots of nasty punishments, then suddenly, nothing happened, and they continued as they were before.

So we go back, have another lawsuit, Bill Gates makes a visit to his friends in Washington and reminds them how much Microsoft is benefitting the economy, and 'gosh, what would happen if all the Military's computers suddenly crashed all at the same time?', and nothing will happen again.

Fortunately for Opera, if Bill Gates goes to Washington it'll do little or nothing to influence the European Union.

Of course he can rub nuts with George Bush so it's win/lose.

do you think the american military is stupid?

like, seriously?

Microsoft can lobby Congress, but so can Red Hat. The NSA even developed a security framework for linux (SELinux) which has entered the open-source pool of software. The DOJ and 20 states sued the company, for chrissake.

Stop with this nonsense - you make the anti-microsoft argument look bad.

What Happened?

George W. Bush got elected, fined Microsoft $250,000 and proclaimed Microsoft a vital interest to the economic stability of the United States of America.

The Justice Department under the Bush Administration has given them a free ride.

Ironically, as a Libertarian I laugh at the usual hypocrisy of both the Dems and Reps.

Gates is a registered Democrat, until it comes to stiffing the Law--he wears his Republican suit when it's a matter of Greed.

Principles my ass!

His entire facade about helping 3rd world economies includes the fact he wants to exploit future markets for Microsoft.

They all do it and they act as if they are humanitarians.

The point of a Standard in any Industry is to make the Industry flow and prosper. The more companies created the better the economic stability of us all.

Consolidating destroys competition, rapes the masses and leaves a top tier walking around as if they are Money Gods.

At least he didn't procreate. That's one thing he did right.

"Without a browser, how can you go download Opera"

You can use a USB key or a CD-ROM, you can ask a friend, buy a magazine with a CD-ROM with Opera, etc... No need for a web browser.

"Furthermore, asking Microsoft to bundle something besides IE is just dumb"

That would be ridiculous, thank God, Opera didn't ask it. They're asking Microsoft to either fix their browser so that a web site that works in IE works in other browsers and to offer the user to uninstall the browser.

Apple doesn't have 90+ % desktop OS marketshare.

They did have 90+% of the PPC market though

And Microsoft got convicted of having a monopoly with Windows on the x86 market, not the desktop/pc market.

Seems kind of funny how specific they had to get.

Edited 2007-12-14 22:26

Well, removability. Safari can actually be removed and it's rather simple. Getting rid of IE on Windows is not simple, though possible with third party tools.

You're freaking kidding me right? Did you even *READ* the article?

Look, lifted straight from the article: Opera requests the Commission to implement two remedies to Microsoft's abusive actions. First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop.

Neither of those are healthy solutions. I think the best thing to do is offer a link in the shell (Most likely how Windows Live Services are tied into Welcome Center in Windows Vista) which allows the user to download the browser of his choice.

Still I see this as a cold day in hell though. Browser wars are fought by a very niche group of people, my grandmother doesn't care what the hell she's running so-long as the web page displays really pretty.

Do you really think unbundling IE will do anything other than cause grief? Those who don't want IE have already moved on to other means, the Web browser market isn't as cut throat as say the PC Market or the PMP Market.

I mean, there are legitimate arguments here. IE *should* be forced to adopt open standards, even if along side their own proprietary standards. However, unbundling IE from Windows is in my opinion a silly idea, and would give no real benefit to any competitor.

"Browser wars are fought by a very niche group of people, my grandmother doesn't care what the hell she's running so-long as the web page displays really pretty."
This is exactly the attitude that Opera's challenging. By sitting on their market share and refusing to properly implement web standards _that they agreed to_, MS costs companies and web development teams millions of dollars in extra testing, development and support.

This is a war that every company with a web presence should be fighting.

I couldn't agree more. I'm surprised open-source geeks don't back Opera more than that. Opera is closed-source but it fights for open standards on the web. If you add up all the extra hours testing in IE5.5, IE6 and IE7, fixing page rendering problems, if you also add up all lost profit because visitors stumble uppon a "Please update to IE" web page and leave, it's a lot of money, time and frustration.

Nobody said there shouldn't be a browser there when you start your new computer for the first time. But why should it be Internet Explorer? Why can't IE be removed, by the OEM who sold you the computer, so you can find Opera or Firefox or another browser in there?

For two reasons: (1) You cannot