Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 17th Jan 2009 15:29 UTC
After successfully battling Microsoft over the company's bundling of Windows Media Player, the European Union is now ready for more. The European Commission has charged Microsoft with violating competition laws because of the Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.
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RE[4]: Comment by Anonymous Penguin
by WorknMan on Sat 17th Jan 2009 23:58
in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by Anonymous Penguin"
Member since:2005-11-13
The point is, with great power comes great responsibility. Regardless wether Opera is crap or wether it rules, Microsoft should behave to the rules that apply to dominant players. Opera has to operate in a disrupted market and has every right to complain about that.
Well, look at it this way... Opera has been around since 1994-96, and what is their marketshare, like 1%? Then Firefox burst onto the scene in 2002 (as Phoenix), and now they got like 20%. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome has a bigger marketshare than Opera at this point.
During the time that Netscape died and Firefox rose from the ashes, Opera could've been a serious contender, but they weren't. And do you know why? Because they make a suck-ass product. I ONLY became interested in it (and use it) because of the text-to-speech feature, but as I pointed out already, that feature has been broken since v9.5 came out, and still isn't fixed.
Am I saying that Opera hasn't been hurt by Microsoft's business practices? No. What I am saying is that they've probably been hurt more by their own ineptitude than anything MS has done. Even if MS were not in the picture, Opera would still be getting its ass handed to it by its competitors.
So why is Opera bitching and whining about what MS is doing, when they can't even compete with anybody else on the lower tier?
Edited 2009-01-18 00:01 UTC
Member since:
2005-07-06
I'm not denying that they should improve their products, but their product is okay. I'm using it occasionally, especially when I cannot use Konqueror (for example why I occasionally use Windows), and I cannot say anything else than that it is a top quality browser.
The point is, with great power comes great responsibility. Regardless wether Opera is crap or wether it rules, Microsoft should behave to the rules that apply to dominant players. Opera has to operate in a disrupted market and has every right to complain about that.
Now that the complaint is there, the jurisprudence is there from the Media Player case, what did people expect that would happen?