Submitted by “Opera Software filed a complaint with the European Commission yesterday which is aimed at giving consumers a genuine choice of Web browsers. The complaint describes how Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. Opera has requested the Commission to take the necessary actions to compel Microsoft to give consumers a real choice and to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer.”
Suing Microsoft to force them to upgrade Internet Explorer?
It’d be amusing if Microsoft countersued Opera for not sufficiently supporting Silverlight, WMA, or some other crazy Microsoft-made technology. The principle is the same.
If they’re not good enough, you don’t sue them, you outdo them. You’d think Opera would understand this principle.
Edited 2007-12-13 18:38 UTC
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.
That is an opinion, not based in fact; just ask Apple, IBM, or any of the dozens of Linux repackagers that are not going out of business.
(As an aside, I am really annoyed by this modern trend to add the word ‘open’ in front of all instances of the word ‘protocol’ or ‘standard’. This implies that they are all intimately related to open-source software and inimical to closed-source software, and I’m sure the people who started doing that were aware of this.)
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.
“You should support what we tell you to support and nothing we don’t tell you to support so it’s easier for us to replace you in the market.”
Exact same.
“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).
Sounds to me like Flash/Java is the problem. After all, it’s those plugins doing the actual work, so how can you blame the browser?
Different browsers have different problems. If the plugins were to blame the problems would be identical. However, Konqueror (and IE7) does not suffer from the same amount of bloat when visiting Flash and Java “infested” sites.
It is however entirely possible that the blame is to be put (at least in part) on poorly written applets (with regard to Java) and/or incorrect use of Flash on the websites.
People complaining about Firefox using a lot of memory proves it by pointing users to Flash-infested sites. So it is only reasonable to point Opera-users to Java-infested sites when Opera has issues with Java.
“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.
Did Opera just pass the ACID2 Test.. or why is this coming so late ?
Next will be Notepad, Calculator, and some of fonts maybe.
This is not the same thing at. Who is modding these points up?
Will the strength of Firefox hurt Opera’s case? You can bet it’s going to be raised during proceedings as proof that IE isn’t preventing other browsers from succeeding
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’re right in saying that Microsoft used its dominant position to undermine standards via Explorer. But I’m thinking Opera is taking this one step at a time. It’s harder to show in front of a [non-technical] comission how side-effects from Microsoft’s embrace and estinguish strategy have negatively affected the Web industry. But it’s easier (I would say even straightforward) to prove that bundling IE hurts other browser makers.
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) ?
As a Firefox (and Linux) user I agree about the “hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards.” part. Some sites work properly only in IE, especially here in Italy.
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?
So how about this: I’ll create a web site that works in IE only and then you sue Microsoft. When you get the cash, we’ll split it. Deal?
Then we can do the same to Mozilla, Opera, etc.
Edited 2007-12-13 19:10
“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.
You’re right that is ugly!
Some notes that may be of interest to you since you used XHTML 1.0 strict.
1.The <center> tag should not be used in XHTML strict. In you case using text-align: center in the style would work. If you are centering an element use margin: auto; or margin: [vertical] auto;
2. font tags should not be used.
3. Its bad practice to use inline styles.
None of the above are required for IE.
I am no web great designer by any means but that site is the sitting all alone in the bar head hanging in shame sipping a beer quietly in the corner kind of site.
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?
1998 just called. They want their lawsuit back.
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.
but if I buy a PC, I’d prefer being able to browse the internet as soon as I unpack it. Without a browser, how can you go download Opera or w/e else you may need. Furthermore, asking Microsoft to bundle something besides IE is just dumb, they are a company and obviously will bundle *their* product on *their* operating system. The only solution would be for Microsoft to add Opera, Firefox, and every other Windows web browser available, only adding to the clutter of crap icons you see when you purchase a computer.
I feel I need to clarify my position after this post, I never use IE or any microsoft products, but this is just stupid.
“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.
Doesn’t Apple bundle Safari with OS X ???
How is that any different?
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 remove Internet Explorer, because Microsoft made it so it can’t be removed; (2) If an OEM did that they would suffer at the hands of Microsoft.
This is not fair and should be corrected. In a normal world, based on fair competition, anybody should be able to strike a deal with an OEM and agree to bundle the browser of their choice in there. Canonical, for example, may want to pay Dell to bundle Konqueror on their Windows PC’s. Why not? If Dell thinks Canonical offers a better deal why shouldn’t they do this?
Because Microsoft has stomped down on any such chance and today it’s simply not possible to do this. And this is fundamentaly unfair.
Not so. Microsoft sells Windows. They shouldn’t have any say in what any other piece of software gets included, other than stuff that is truly essential to the operating system. If an OEM wants to ship Windows with Opera instead of IE, Total Commander instead of Windows Explorer and ZoneAlarm instead of Windows Fireall, they should be able to do so.
Don’t kid yourself. Microsoft does all this on purpose. They’re not the victim here, they’re the aggressor. They give OEM’s very low prices for Windows in order to include it with their PC’s instead of Linux or other OS. They “punish” OEM’s that dare to do otherwise by revoking their special prices. They strike down very hard if an OEM dares to even think about bundling a competing product with Windows. Did you ever see an OEM computer that came with something else instead of IE? Why do you think that is?
Funny you should say that, I just set up a new HP computer for someone, and the default browser on first boot was Firefox.
Was it Firefox or Netscape?
Granted, it happens. But it shouldn’t take HP teaming up with AOL to make it happen. Every OEM should be able to choose what they think is best for their customers.
Every OEM can choose. That was a specific of the agreement from the Netscape lawsuit. There can be no retaliatory pricing action from Microsoft on that.
The problem here is that it’s not so simple for an OEM. They want something that will work. IE is built together and tested together with Windows. The rendering engine is an integral part of the Windows Help system and sits behind a few of the in-box applications. Firefox and Opera are great for browsing the web (though I haven’t had much reason to turn to Firefox after using IE7), but they won’t be able to fulfill the other roles IE has in the OS. (IExplore.exe is, after all, just a part of what makes IE). Why does an OEM want to spend extra time, money, and risk on putting in a product that wasn’t built and tested with the OS? If something goes wrong with IE, people rightly look to Microsoft for the fix. Who provides the fix for those other browsers? Which of those people can OEMs count on?
As you probably know, Opera is a commercial product, and offers support. And between you and me, “support” for IE is a joke. Microsoft offers no such thing to regular users. Even if you have a problem with IE you can’t do anything about it. Microsoft may know about it or not and they may fix it or not whenever they please. Compare this with Opera, who have a bug tracker and forums populated by actual Opera employees, and you can actually see the problem being fixed or get help for it.
Why would an OEM choose something other than IE? Because IE is often crap, simple as that. That’s the whole point of competition: allow products to compete on merit.
And there’s no need for IE itself to be so deeply bundled with Windows. All the things you talk about (help, updates) can be solved by bundling just the core libraries that deal with HTML, web connections and so on. Absolutely no need to actually bundle IE.
As a matter of fact, yes: Yahoo buys Windows PC’s with FireFox installed with the Google search toolbar by default. How’s that for curious?
OK ok, fine, there are examples few and far in between. Let’s talk again about this when you’ll go buy a computer with Windows and you will get a choice of a browser that should come with it, or honestly don’t know what browser it will have on. Now it’s 99% sure it will be IE. That needs to change.
> Windows Fireall
haha, I bet you did this on purpose =p
That’s begging the question.
Why would you be in that situation in the first place? A much more plausible scenario is that you get a new computer, and you can indeed use it browse the web using whichever browser the OEM saw fit to include (possibly even as giving you a choice of browser software at purchase time). Or it would be a more plausible scenario, if Microsoft’s OEM contracts didn’t specifically prohibit pre-loading 3rd party browsers on threat of reduced OEM volume discounts.
Or it would be a more plausible scenario, if Microsoft’s OEM contracts didn’t specifically prohibit pre-loading 3rd party browsers on threat of reduced OEM volume discounts.
They don’t anymore. They did and got in trouble for it, but that was 10+ years ago.
Mea culpa, I stand corrected. I had a vague memory that, during the anti-trust trial, they were able to keep the OEM contracts secret by arguing the offensively-absurd notion that their contracts could not be disclosed because they were trade secrets.
Heh… ever heard of FTP?
Then of course the question would be: How do you download a browser/FTP-client when you don’t have a browser/FTP-client?
In the old days they were installed from CD’s, but I’m not sure browsers and/or FTP-clients are still distributed that way. Most magazines these days just give a code to a download area, and then we’re screwed anyway.
With the first ISP I used, they sent you a package with a set of diskettes containing the connection software and some ancient version of Netscape (2.5 if memory doesn’t fail me).
Nah, MS wouldn’t need to bundle a copy of each other browser. In the end user’s best interest, it would be ideal if MS offered installs for all the other browsers plus there own.
They don’t need to go to that extent though, just provide a Windows that IE can truly be uninstalled from. This way you can connect to the internet (websites more accurately) right from a bare metal install then uninstall IE after replacing it with a browser of your choice.
I think the real issue here is that rather than competing based on product quality, MS is continuing to exploit the limited knowledge of there customers; “oh hey, there’s a browser here.. why should I go find something different?”
Opera manager: We are not relevant anymore, webkit and Firefox have stealed or thunder, what can we do?
Opera Consultant: easy, sue MS for something.
Opera manager: Brilliant, what would I do w/o you?
Opera, for now on is a browser that I’ll never use again.
Edited 2007-12-13 19:12
“Opera, for now on is a browser that I’ll never use again.
Patent troll”.
You’ve never used it.
This isn’t a patent lawsuit. What in the world are you talking about?
Opera Software ASA defends its interests and its users, this is more than normal, no? How many complaints have we seen on the Opera forums regarding IE-only web sites? Microsoft has its part of responsibilities, not just the kiddy webdevs.
I like Opera and think it’s a good browser. I believe lawsuits are a lame way to raise capital. Maybe Opera’s lawsuit is legitimate. Who knows? Maybe this has more meaning to Euro’s than Ami’s since Opera is a European-based company.
Opera is unlikely to raise capital via this means, it’s an anti-trust lawsuit.
Opera is unlikely to raise capital via this means, it’s an anti-trust lawsuit.
I have seen the word ‘lawsuit’ multiple times in this thread, but it is not. The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union. One of its tasks is to oversee that competition is fair. If a company does not compete fairly, the EC can decide to fine a company, to contribute the damage the absence of competition incurred back to the EU member states. Besides that, fines are imposed to break unfair competition.
So, Opera is not taking Microsoft to court. They are asking to review Microsoft’s unfair competition with respect to browser. And there is a precedent for this, the bundling of a media player, where the EC demanded that Microsoft unbundle the media player.
To be honest, I would rather like to see easier EU-wide unbundling of Windows for new PCs. In other words: more choice, or an easy and clear procedure to reject the EULA and get back the money paid for a Windows license, that Microsoft and manufacturers/resellers have to abide to.
Quite right, I just happened to type lawsuit instead of complaint, my bad for lack of a (better) word :^)
The funny thing is that due to whom they’re addressing the complaint to, the difference between it being a lawsuit and complaint is all a matter of some dictionary definition that’s very fuzzy as to which is which, since the net result is still intended to be the same between either one: to force the entity complained against (Microsoft in this case) to do something or to stop doing something, and since it is the entity they’re complaining to (the EU’s agency) it might as well be a court, since that’s the end result, either way.
Opera, I believe, would be much better off doing two things:
1. Advertise that Microsoft has non-compliant web standards support, and that theirs is better (though I’m not aware of it being 100% perfect, either, which tends to make them a bit hypocritical, really) while at the same time
2. Support a broken standards mode where they very closely emulate the broken Microsoft implementation, and report that they’re IE to servers. Sure, that’s more expensive to do than to only support the official standard as best you’re able to, but nobody said competing had to be easy…
While the open standards are the official standards everyone has supposedly agreed upon, unless I see evidence someone can point me to elsewhere, there’s no legally-binding agreement the browser makers signed stating that they’d all implement their browsers to be 100% perfect according to the standards documents; hence, like it or not, Microsoft has effectively created a de facto standard dialect of the various “standards” which is likely to happen with anything of such complexity, if you have meaningful complex software development experience. If you think web browsers are complicated beasts to get all the niggling details working as expected according to any given standard, I suggest you look into the complexities of 3D CAD software interoperability, where things are far more subtle.
‘1. Advertise that Microsoft has non-compliant web standards support, and that theirs is better (though I’m not aware of it being 100% perfect, either, which tends to make them a bit hypocritical, really) while at the same time’
I don’t think this would help them much. The only people who know anything about, or even care about web standards already know about opera, and use another browser other than ie.
Standards are only matter when people know and care about them.
Take eating for example. I’m often amazed, when I watch mtv, how Americans (for it’s all I ever see on these mtv reality shows) eat. They all just sitdown IN FRONT of a television and eat – or rather, tip the food down their throats as quick as possible, no one talks to each other, they nearly all eat ready-meals, no one seems to cook and no one waits for all the others to be served before they start eating their ‘great grub’ as I once heard someone describe it on an MTV show.
I see Americans in this respect as IE.
There are people, equiv. to Opera users who sit down with each other, cook real food with each other – and by real food I mean not puting a ready-meal in the microwave, they wait for everyone else to be served, they something to the others like Guten Appetit. It’s a whole better experience. These are the standards set by previous generations – a sort of w3c
If I started advertise American eating standards as non-compliant with established standards and that we should all switch to eating the way people do in france, germany, who’s going to care? Certainly not the Americans (the IE users). The only people who would talk about it would be the Germans and the french (the opera nd firefox users), as they are some of the few people interested in such things. Of course, they would all laugh and write blog posts about how ‘stupid’ and ‘lazy’ the americans are for eating the way they do. Americans will keep on eating the way they want becuase they’re not interested in eating standards and customs (and don’t read blogs or computer news articles either). Just like IE users would keep on using IE, because they’re just using the internet. Not IE. Not a browser. Most wouldn’t even call it IE, it would just be the internet.
Edited 2007-12-14 13:33
It’s not about raising money:
“We seek no money from Microsoft.” – Hakon Wium Lie (CTO)
http://people.opera.com/howcome/2007/msft/
It’s also not a lawsuit.
Ok, Opera isn’t open source. It’s free though and it’s been the best damn browser I’ve ever used since 1998. It would install on my old machines when mozilla and IE wouldn’t. It uses a lot less resources than IE currently and generally has in the past. I think it’s always been beter than the old mozilla browsers. As for firefox… opera in my opinion is faster and more secure. But.. Firefox is bundled on all these linux PCs so its much more well known now and since its open source you have all these license nazi’s telling all their friends to download it and stop being evil using IE.
From the perspective of website, I agree that I have to make all my websites to conform to IE standards. And it sucks having to make it work on all the browsers.
Microsoft should just buy opera and rename it IE. Opera makes their money in the mobile or embedded market nowadays since they failed in the browser market.
Opera, beat it like it owes you money, because obviously, you think it does.
I love opera i really do, infact i am posting this from opera, but seriously. Lets say they win and IE is no longer bundled with windows.
“great! now users for windows can go download opera for there computer…. oh wait, now that ie is gone…. wow we did not think this through.”
🙂
I love opera i really do, infact i am posting this from opera, but seriously. Lets say they win and IE is no longer bundled with windows.
“great! now users for windows can go download opera for there computer…. oh wait, now that ie is gone…. wow we did not think this through.”
🙂
Well, long before there was a web browser there was this thing called FTP.
They wouldn’t even need to include Opera, IE, Firefox or anybody else’s web browser on the installation media. Just provide a shortcut of sorts that could use something like wget to download a web browser using either HTTP or FTP.
As long as the user could choose among some options, perhaps most would go with the flow and pick IE but at least a reasonable number would take their chances with something else and this way, the $%&*@#$% IE-only web developers would get their act together and make a proper website!
Opera is not ‘suing’ Microsoft, it’s filing a complaint with the European Commission.
The Commission can then choose to research the complaint, and can force Microsoft to do certain things based on European antitrust law.
The internet is now an integral part of the desktop experience, you can’t realistically ship an OS to home users now without a web browser. I mean you wouldn’t believe the number of users i’ve met that think Office is part of Windows.
The point is whilst Netscape may have had a point all those years ago peoples expectations of what an OS is have rightly changed dramatically since then.
The internet is now an integral part of the desktop experience
Now why is that? was it because Internet Explorer came bundled with Windows, and everyone got used to it? Maybe?
you can’t realistically ship an OS to home users now without a web browser. I mean you wouldn’t believe the number of users i’ve met that think Office is part of Windows.
Exactly, Office isn’t bundled with Windows, and yet people get by perfectly well. I’m interested in this idea of people being able to choose their browser on first boot, i.e. a selection pops-up and you get to choose which one.
Now why is that? was it because Internet Explorer came bundled with Windows, and everyone got used to it? Maybe?
I think you know as well as I do the internet would have been big with or without IE.
Office isn’t bundled with Windows, and yet people get by perfectly well
That’s because office isn’t a desktop app it’s a business app.
I’m interested in this idea of people being able to choose their browser on first boot, i.e. a selection pops-up and you get to choose which one.
Choice is only useful to the educated.
“That’s because office isn’t a desktop app it’s a business app”.
Ow, ow, ow… Could you explain the difference between a desktop and a business application? Maybe also the difference between business and corporate software? LOL
So office suites are business applications. Right. So students can’t use office suites. I wonder why MS has student discounts for their stripped down version of Office. Is MSN Messenger a desktop application? Then why everybody uses it in companies? Bah!…
Yes yes, but the internet != IE :p
Merely a reflection of the ignorance of the user. Many open-source OS install without a web browser. The OS package manager provides the mechanism for the user to install the web browser that the user prefers from the package repository. There is no reason why Microsoft could not adopt this model … other than the fact that it would hurt their vendor lock-in business model.
There is one issue, Windows is a closed platform. As such, there is no monetary gain for Microsoft to do such.
Like I’ve outlined in my previous post here, there is little-to-no benefits in unbundling Windows either.
By unbundling I mean completely removing, the separation of IE from the shell is a legitimate complaint and it seems to have been done with IE7.
I think the package manager, and the whole removal of IE from the OS is a solution looking for a problem.
Do you really think if you put the two browsers side by side, the average Joe would give a damn?
As long as the address he puts in the little box at the top makes the pretty pictures show at the bottom he’s not going to care.
The people who desire Firefox/Opera/Safari will probably know exactly where to look.
I think effort could be better spent promoting the browsers after the user has used IE, this way he’s aquainted with it’s faults and if he’s looking for an alternative then one will be readily availible.
Windows design philosophy has always been simplicity yes I know this can be contended
Giving Joe Users choice creates confusion.
They can still choose not to use IE and install an alternative if they feels comfortable doing this.
Linux desktop orientated distro’s without a browser? Which? In fact I would go as far as saying that the desktop Linux philosophy today for the most popular distro’s is “sensible default” which ironically appears to be quite popular.
LMFAO! I can’t wait to hear you tell all the grandmothers out there that they have to learn how to use a “package respository” in order to install a web browser. Clearly, you don’t have any contact with the average end-user.
Those kind of “suing” looks like good PR for Opera. More talks, more interest, more users.
Anyway Opera is great browser and should be noticed.
IIRC (or if i read correctly!), when they first use the « embrace, extend then extinguish » philosophy, it was to take over the browser market in 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
http://www.microsoft.com/about/companyinformation/timeline/timeline…
I hope nobody brings up some BS about IE being the de facto standard. If you think IE is the de facto standard, you need to go to the dictionary and learn what the word standard means. IE being a standard means that its quirky behavior would be documented well enough that 3rd parties could reproduce the behavior on their own browsers.
You are getting confused. What you are talking about is a ‘formal standard’, or ‘published standard’ (usually shortened to just ‘standard’, or, for more precision, Standard.) a ‘de-facto standard’ unformalised, and has come about through common usage, hence the word de-facto.
So to argue that ‘Microsoft HTML’ (you know what I mean) was a de-facto standard of the web around 1999 and 2000 is an accurate statement.
To be honest I hate Opera and refuse to use it. It is not because its not open source and its not even this stupid case. It is because Opera refuse to implement the simplest features into their browser. Features that ANY other browser has despite Opera being the one browser “with everything”. Features that people request but Opera time after time ignore because they obviously knows better. Once or twice a year I download the newest Opera to check if any of these issues that has been there as far back as I remember (like version 5 or something) has been fixed, and every time I get so disapointed. Every time I post on their forums a long and detailed post on what they need to fix, how they can fix it (pseudocode-ish) and why they should fix it, and EVERY TIME they ignore it or I get a group of Opera fanboys flaming me to death.
Seriously Opera, you can only blame yourselves if people want to use IE over your product when IE at least does what they expect. Even my family refuse to use Opera, while any other browser they have tested (firefox, safari) are fine as a replacement for IE. Why is that? Listen to your potential users and you MAY perhaps increase your market share without making stupid claims against Microsoft. I will use the best product for me, and so will my family. I would rather use IE than Opera as it is right now.
But this case reminds me that its been six months since my last try, and I will try just to prove one more time that Opera fails to provide the browsing experience I need.
I am sorry if this seems to be a rant or trolling, but this is a case I actually have been thinking of much in anger. I hate nothing more than a company that treat their customers like they don’t matter.
Edited 2007-12-13 23:37
You really sound like a troll if you ain’t. So, what are you missing in Opera? I honnestly have no idea what more feature they could add! As for myself, I chose Opera as my default browser since the 8.x series and ditched Firefox for good. If I weren’t using Opera I would use Seamonkey, which is pretty good. Oh, and honnestly I don’t know any other browser company that mixes its employees and its users on a public forum like Opera does. So yes, they definitely listen and discuss with their users.
In my profession (lets just say its within the technical area. wont reveal too much personal information in a public debate like this), EVERYONE knows what Opera is, where to get it, and most people has even tried it themselves on their own computers. Yet, I know zero people who uses it AT ALL. They all use gecko or webkit/khtml based browsers or even IE. Almost none of these are open source zealots so thats not the reason. They all claim it is because Opera is no good as a user experience. That it is not very intuitive or user friendly. However, everyone agree that it is a good browser otherwise, and especially its rendering and low resource consumption are used as example of where it is excellent. You dont have to believe me. I really dont give a shit. I am just saying in case someone at Opera is reading this and perhaps see that there is a reason for why they fail, and its not necessarily Microsoft’s fault…at least not Microsoft alone.
Am I really a troll? Or perhaps I am just someone who really want Opera to be a good browser, but are about to give up their shitty attitude towards people with suggestions on how to improve… And by improve I mean implementing the most basic features which for me and many others should be in any browser, and actually IS in any OTHER browser. Don’t label me a troll because you disagree. This is just mine (and a bunchload of others) opinion, but it doesn’t mean it applies for everyone, like for instance you.
My hopes: Opera reads this and get their act together to release the best god damn browser within the next few months…or at least before its too late.
“Don’t label me a troll because you disagree”
No, not because I disagree, but because for the 2nd time you don’t tell us what these “basic features” are. I guess you’re inventing. A 10-year old browser like Opera lacking basic features? LOL…
Good God, two enormous rants without any substance. Could you please at least describe what exactly whar your issues with Opera so that we can understand where you’re coming from? You mentioned posts on their forums which is good but did not provide a single reference for them!
Without that your words aren’t much more than hot air and as such I think that you can be safely labeled as a troll, yes?
Unfortunately, I have agree with J.R.
I have used Opera since 1998 but abandoned it in 2005 in favour of Firefox.
It’s still a slick, fast browser but its feature set is not what really what I want. Opera keeps on improving their browser but I have to agree with not listening to their users.
Opera’s forum has a feature request section.
For years and years, the number one request was an Adblocker, as easy to use as FF. First they couldn’t implement it, as they used ads themselves, then it was too late, FF had overtaken them. But it’s still not as easy as FF. IMO, very few of the requests on the forum are implemented, and FF made customisation so easy with the extensions.
When I look at my FF extensions, 4 are there to mimic Opera’s user interface/features but 5 of them add totally unique functionality. Isn’t it clear what Opera should do? Build an extension framework that makes it possible for others to build extensions. Instead we end up with “features” like Speeddial or a complete Mail program, which might not please all.
This complaint to Microsoft to me feels a bit like sour grapes. Opera made a lot of bad decisions in the last 5 years (like making the browser ad-based and then free too late, adding features that are ok but not essential) and were blown away by FF and IE.
Opera is now relegated to a market where it still shines: cross platform, low memory print and speed.
Filing a complaint LONG after the band has marched on feels exactly like how Opera’s feature set has developed the last 5 years: too little too late
“For years and years, the number one request was an Adblocker, as easy to use as FF. First they couldn’t implement it, as they used ads themselves, then it was too late, FF had overtaken them. But it’s still not as easy as FF. IMO, very few of the requests on the forum are implemented, and FF made customisation so easy with the extensions”.
So? For years, I’ve used a user style sheet that has blocked virtually all ads. Now Opera has an ad blocker out of the box, so it’s easier than having to search the web, install and maintain across new releases an Adblock extension, don’t you think? I don’t remember having heard from the Opera devs that they couldn’t implement an ad blocker. That doesn’t make sense. If you look at all the features implemented in Opera, you can’t say they don’t implement features asked in the Opera forum. The average joe doesn’t know about extension nor does he know where to search or what to search so extensions are only for a limited community of computer savvy users. When it works out of the box it’s definitely easier. Have a look at this section: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=24 you’ll see that most threads are replied by the Opera devs. Do you see that with the Microsoft or Mozilla corporations?
“When I look at my FF extensions, 4 are there to mimic Opera’s user interface/features”
If you used Opera, you wouldn’t have had to go through the hassle of downloading and maintaining extensions, it would have worked out of the box.
“but 5 of them add totally unique functionality”
I’d like to know what functionalities.
“Isn’t it clear what Opera should do? Build an extension framework that makes it possible for others to build extensions”.
I don’t see why if you already have everything you need out of the box. Plus, extensions break across new versions, which is a pain. Some extensions aren’t even maintain over time. You definitely don’t want this sh#t in Opera.
“Instead we end up with “features” like Speeddial or a complete Mail program, which might not please all”.
If you don’t want SpeedDial, just click “Hide” in the lower-right corner. If you don’t want to use the email client (which is my default email client BTW), just don’t add any new email account, it’ll never annoy, it’s hidden. It doesn’t use extra space either, Opera uses less space and RAM than Firefox even with all these “hidden” features. Imagine comparing Opera and Firefox with all extensions installed to mimic the Opera feature set in terms of used space and RAM usage. That would be terrible.
“Opera is now relegated to a market where it still shines: cross platform, low memory print and speed”.
I’m surprised you found something good in Opera.
“So? For years, I’ve used a user style sheet that has blocked virtually all ads. Now Opera has an ad blocker out of the box, so it’s easier than having to search the web, install and maintain across new releases an Adblock extension, don’t you think? I don’t remember having heard from the Opera devs that they couldn’t implement an ad blocker. That doesn’t make sense. If you look at all the features implemented in Opera, you can’t say they don’t implement features asked in the Opera forum. The average joe doesn’t know about extension nor does he know where to search or what to search so extensions are only for a limited community of computer savvy users. When it works out of the box it’s definitely easier. Have a look at this section: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=24 you’ll see that most threads are replied by the Opera devs. Do you see that with the Microsoft or Mozilla corporations?”
–The adblocker is too static and just not as good as FF. Yes you can edit some user sheet or so or download one, but it’s a lot more difficult than loading an ad blocker from FF: select the adblock list you want (5 choices!) and never return.
About extensions: especially Opera users are tech savvy, so I don’t see a problem. Users will use extensions.
“When I look at my FF extensions, 4 are there to mimic Opera’s user interface/features”
“If you used Opera, you wouldn’t have had to go through the hassle of downloading and maintaining extensions, it would have worked out of the box.”
–Yes agreed, but thank god I can mimic it, actually with several competing extensions, it’s easy.
“but 5 of them add totally unique functionality”
“I’d like to know what functionalities.”
–Well:
Stumbleupon: social browsing
SwitchProxy: quick proxy changing
ShowIP: show websites IP
CustomizeGoogle: get the sharp edges of google
CookieSafe: you can do the same in Opera but not easily
IE Tab: for when a website is IE only
Ebay Buddy
Googlesync (Opera link?)
Foxy music
So what do i use to get Opera functionality??
All-in-one-Sidebar
Mousegestures
NoScript
Tab Mix Plus
CookieSafe
“I don’t see why if you already have everything you need out of the box. Plus, extensions break across new versions, which is a pain. Some extensions aren’t even maintain over time. You definitely don’t want this sh#t in Opera.”
–I really don’t know what you are talking about, I NEVER had ANY problem with extensions except load time. It’s a myth.
“Instead we end up with “features” like Speeddial or a complete Mail program, which might not please all”.
If you don’t want SpeedDial, just click “Hide” in the lower-right corner. If you don’t want to use the email client (which is my default email client BTW), just don’t add any new email account, it’ll never annoy, it’s hidden. It doesn’t use extra space either, Opera uses less space and RAM than Firefox even with all these “hidden” features. Imagine comparing Opera and Firefox with all extensions installed to mimic the Opera feature set in terms of used space and RAM usage. That would be terrible.ec
–That’s not the point. Opera spend a year to build a torrent client. Or a mail client. BUT WHY, there are so many very good programs like utorrent or Thunderbird, doing this for me. Opera could have used their time more wisely.
“Opera is now relegated to a market where it still shines: cross platform, low memory print and speed”.
I’m surprised you found something good in Opera.
–It’s not too late for Opera I think.
Just because they haven’t implemented your pet feature doesn’t mean they haven’t implemented anybody’s. Just because you don’t use the mail client doesn’t mean that nobody does. There are a large number of customers that have cried out for exactly those features.
Remember that every percentage point of market share translates into millions of users.
Ah it’s good to see so many MS Shills in here – we all know that Microsoft has stifled competition. Bundling of the browser was an issue that the DOJ raised a long time ago, and MS clearly lied about being able to remove IE from Windows to the courts (perjury anyone?). We all know the US legal system is corrupt, hopefully the EU legal system is a bit more honest, and will take the necessary actions against Microsoft.
Dave
I’m really sorry, but anyone who says that MS is still trying to subvert web standards is either stupid or ignorant. They WERE trying to subvert web standards, after netscape went down, they didn’t really move one way or the other for quite awhile. IE7 is a big step (not where they need to be, but much more progress in that direction then what we have seen from them in over a decade), and the new IE team seem to actually “get it”. As someone who works with web technology, the ie team blog is on my rss reader, and Dean (the manager) is not an idiot when it comes to this stuff.
99% of these posts seem to be from people who do not work in the industry, or just plain have no clue about what they are talking about.
<pet peeve rant>
Speaking of ignorance, I’m kinda tired of the whole “convicted monopolist” thing. First off, they weren’t “convicted”, as anti-trust and criminal law are two different things. Secondly, (as was pointed out in an early post), It is not against the law to have a monopoly, it just puts you into a special status when it comes to what you can and can’t do. MS has lost suites dealing with anti-competitive behavior, saying “convicted monopolist” shows the world that you do not know what you are talking about. When the RIAA says “Downloading is stealing”, they are showing either a profound level of ignorance when it comes to IP law, OR they are deliberately trying to spread propaganda. When someone talks about “convicted monopolists”, it is the same thing.
</pet peeve rant>
As for the actual lawsuit, IMHO it is bogus. What they should be pushing for is visible decoupling of IE (take off desktop and start menu shortcuts, and the few bits that are IE specific and not com objects) Make it and media player optional features (like IIS or their other servers). Bundling a web browser is standard nowadays, but these measures are reasonable, considering the afore-mentioned monopoly status of microsoft.
Imagine I came up with an alternative file browser for windows. Then I sued MS for anti-competitive behavior, and asked for them to completely remove explorer.exe from windows. That is just plain ludicrous, in todays day and age not shipping a general purpose OS with a web browser is the same thing.
I agree with you, in principle. But I’m not sure how you can achieve this, from a practical standpoint, without completing hosing the public. Many people have no concept of what they need on their computer, how to install a web browser, where are optional components selected, etc. Market share numbers bear out the reality that whatever happens to be on the machine at the time of installation tends to remain the tool of choice for the vast number of users. Sure, you could remove any reference to a web browser from the desktop, but how does the average user install it? That’s a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t think it’s sufficient to hand-wave it away with statements like “they’ll figure it out” or “the OEM will have to provide instructions” or “I could really care less”. 😉
I don’t think it would be that hard. Under Add/Remove Programs there is a link that says “Turn Windows Features On/Off”. If they stick stuff that the general public actually wants (like IE or WMP) in there, it would become general knowledge quick enough. Those people you are talking about are the ones that MS has the “unfair” advantage over in the first place. IMO moving bundled apps to the Additional Windows Features panel would be a good balance between allowing windows to keep essential features, and reducing the unfair advantage that they have when it comes to market share of said apps.
I don’t think it would be that hard. Under Add/Remove Programs there is a link that says “Turn Windows Features On/Off”. If they stick stuff that the general public actually wants (like IE or WMP) in there, it would become general knowledge quick enough. Those people you are talking about are the ones that MS has the “unfair” advantage over in the first place. IMO moving bundled apps to the Additional Windows Features panel would be a good balance between allowing windows to keep essential features, and reducing the unfair advantage that they have when it comes to market share of said apps.
That’s not discoverable. It’s the same problem that MS Office had. People complained that they couldn’t find a particular feature because it was nested inside several layers of menus and a tab on a dialog. Office solved the problem with their new “Ribbon” UI, which puts practically all useful functionality in a tabbed toolbar. I’m not saying that it can’t be done. I’m just saying that it’s difficult to do.
It would take some reworking, but honestly, what better time then now? That is what Vista and Office 2007 are all about, breaking old ideas because the old ones were downright archaic. Notice that the only people who have a problem with ribbon are old time office gurus, and even they usually end up saying it was a good idea after a few months.
Edited 2007-12-14 18:19 UTC
I agree with you, as long as they surface the browser selection in a more obvious place, like Start |”Get a Web Browser”. Or a new desktop icon “Get a Web Browser”.
One aspect that gets lost in these discussions is that in large part you and I are not Microsoft’s customers. Dell and HP are. In the US trial, HP showed that Microsoft used their market power to prevent HP from making changes to the desktop that reduced HP’s support costs.
The situation has improved lately, but in past, IE was responsible for considerable support costs from poor security. End users may have paid most of the cost of Microsoft’s decisions, but surely OEMs felt some of it in increased phone support and other measures. I can’t prove it, but I think that a reasonable case may be made that OEMs could have saved money by replacing IE.
Average users don’t need to figure out how to install Opera, OEMs do, and can. Average users do tend stay with what they were given, which could have been Opera if Microsoft hadn’t flexed its market power.
Personally, I think that Microsoft’s efforts to use their market power on the desktop as a lever to gain control over the Internet has failed. The same may be true about their bundling codecs in an attempt to control multimedia distribution and peripherals. But they have succeeded in using control over the desktop to extend their monopoly into the server market. AD, Exchange, and the general lack of documented protocols are clearly aimed at suppressing competition for servers supporting Windows desktops.
It’s OK to hold an earned monopoly. The problem is using that monopoly to extend the monopoly into other markets. It’s too late for unbundling the browser to matter. Splitting Microsoft up would work, and be better for the stockholders in the long run. Separate Office from Windows, or desktops from servers, and the incentive for real competition increases. Microsoft can compete, Microsoft should compete, but too many managers and executives inside Microsoft can’t resist the temptation to use sheer size to avoid competing.
I agree 100%. MS should be nailed to the wall for the way they use OEM volume licensing deals to pressure OEMs. I wasn’t really talking about that though, and neither is Opera. I’m not saying that MS is a good and honest company, I am saying they are still getting alot of flack from people who know very little, but talk alot, in areas that we have seen dramatic improvement in.
I agree again. IE6 was a joke when it came to security, which is why the priorities in IE7 went
1 – Security
2 – Fix common rendering bugs
3 – Support things like CSS better
They talked about that on their blog, and how far they are along with each item. IMHO security is good now with IE, especially with UAC. It is actually a pain to use it for things like intranet webapps, because if you don’t have the settings jacked, it complains alot. With UAC, the IE specifically is sandboxed, and alot more restricted with what it can and cant do then other apps. As for IE bugs, they fixed a good dozen or so of the worst bugs that plagued us web devs. IMHO they could have done more, but if I remember right, the transition from IE5->IE6 actually introduced more, so I’m not complaining. When it comes to CSS, there is still alot of work to be done. Like with the rendering, a step forward is a hell of alot better then a step back, but there are a few tags (like min-width) that NEED to be supported because of how incredibly useful they are in css based layout schemes.
Apparently with IE8 we are getting a new engine, and they have spent alot of time finding out what frustrates developers, and triaging these issues. Like I said in my original post, they are not where they need to be, but they are making measurable moves in the right direction.
Demanding OEMs not be restricted in what they choose to bundle with the OS is more then reasonable. Demanding that Opera be bundled with the OS is a totally different issue.
That is actually why MS hates Google so much. MS has always been about platform controls, and google managed to dominate web services in the matter of a few years, which is something microsoft has wanted before web services even existed. You can see that with stuff like Silverlight, MS is not only helping Miguel and company to implement a GPL clone, but they are paying for the proprietary licenses it will take to do it properly.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t do the same thing with .net. As an ASP.net developer, I can say that the platform is an absolute joy to work with. Due to its nature, it would blow alternatives like java out of the water if it were cross platform. Not only that, but MS wouldn’t even have to support it, because Novell would be more then happy to provide mono. All it would take is a re-licensing of a few things (like the class libraries) to let mono use it, and a patent grant of the things that could come up as issues in the future. Imagine if all it took were a few lines to port any windows application to linux and OSX. MS would also be in control of the platforms direction, which is what they seem to always want to do, whatever the cost.
I agree here too. Splitting up the microsoft BUs would be good for everyone. The problem is that the US government really dropped the ball, they were talking about this way back during the initial DoJ stuff, but it never happened.
Thanks for the intelligent post. I enjoy talking about this sort of thing, but it rarely happens on this site.
“As someone who works with web technology, the ie team blog is on my rss reader, and Dean (the manager) is not an idiot when it comes to this stuff.
99% of these posts seem to be from people who do not work in the industry, or just plain have no clue about what they are talking about”.
Have you ever coded a page with web standards and tested it in IE7? I doubt. Oh, and considering the IE dev team experts in web standards…No comments.
So if some one has no clue what he’s talking about…It’s you.
Everything I do, I code in “web standards” Good web developers use a subset of web standards that work on everything. That subset grew with IE7. The biggest thing that is still missing is min-height, but like I said, IE7 has been the biggest step forwards in at least ten years.
And where in that entire post did I say the IE team were “experts in web standards”? What I DID say was that the reason IE7 was so much better then IE6 was because of the new team, and from what I have been reading, they seem to understand the problem.
Really? You seem to think that microsoft javascript, css, and html are their own languages. You deliberately misquoted me about IE development. You were completely unable to understand what it was I was talking about. That leads me to believe at most you know a bit of html, but you are still willing to talk with authority about web development.
Seriously, folks, we’ve already covered this ground back in 2000. Yeah, that’s right: 7 years ago. The U.S. courts acknowledged that Microsoft had genuinely “integrated” IE into Windows. They were definitely dubious about the technical benefit of this integration, but they didn’t order the company to remove IE. What they wanted changed was the DEFAULT BROWSER setting, the setting which controls which browser is invoked by default, as well as the desktop icon that the user sees.
OEMs (such as Dell, IBM, etc) and browser creators wanted the right to install a browser other than IE; in theory, this would have enabled these OEMs to install, say, Opera or Firefox or whatever, and receive additional revenue from said third party browser supplier. In practice, what happened is that nobody was really willing to come up with additional cash for the OEMs, so they didn’t bother installing third party browsers, unless the browser installation was somehow linked to downstream revenue sources, such as advertising and royalty income. Bottom line: The lack of economic incentive actually reduced the effectiveness of the court’s order. Microsoft was simply smart in supplying a browser, even a crappy browser was sufficient for most peoples’ needs. So, nothing changed.
Microsoft already complied with the court’s order to allow third party browsers to be installed by default. Opera seems to be banking on the fact that the EC enjoys consistently spanking Microsoft on various matters, so it will probably go along with Opera’s complaint. I think that Opera understands that market conditions didn’t increase its market share, so it wants the EC to order MS to remove IE and, thus, force manufacturers into choosing an alternative; namely, Opera.
Personally, I don’t think that it’s going to make a damned bit of difference. First, OEMs have no economic incentive to choose Opera. I doubt seriously that Opera is going to come up with cash to encourage OEMs to include its browser — or it would have already done so. So, why would they choose Opera? Second, OEMs will incur extra cost in bundling Opera, because the burden of testing will fall upon the OEM and Opera. Currently, the OEM can depend heavily on Microsoft to assume the bulk of that testing cost. Third, consumers don’t give a rat’s ass what brand of browser they’re using. They don’t care about open source vs closed source. They don’t care about ideology. They don’t care about standards. They just want their web pages to look pretty and be usable. IE may not be as good as its competition, but it’s perfectly capable as a browser.
imho the lack of updates of the IE engine is holding web development by years, forget about using svg, css 3, etc anytime soon…but what can we do if IE has like what 80% of the market share..ie must DIE
Well, it depends I suppose at how you look at the figures.
What would you say if I claimed that Firefox had the biggest share for any single browser type?
I could possibly make such a claim by separating the IE figures into IE5, IE6 and IE7.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
(This shows an interesting trend, BTW. IE6 usage is declining, IE7 and Firefox are both increasing, and Firefox is 15% points ahead of IE7 and increasing its lead very slowly).
What would you say if I claimed that the Gecko-based browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape) had drawn level with the IE-based browsers:
http://www.safalra.com/website/web-browser-market-share/
There is apparently a lot of room for interpreting the figures and it depends heavily on how you collect figures – hits on sites? What type of sites? How exactly do you determine what browser was used for a given visit?
Obviously, if you have some sites that support IE only (and there are still quite a number of those), and you include hits on those sites in your estimate, then the result is going to be biased towards IE, because people with the better browsers are not going to bother with an IE site. Because of Microsoft’s “extensions” in IE, there are a lot less sites that are “Mozilla-based only” for example.
Edited 2007-12-14 04:49
SVG as a spec blows. It was hijacked by Adobe trying to make it into a flash killer. Then they went ahead and bought flash, leaving a bloated spec for no reason. To my knowledge, there aren’t even any open source projects that fully support SVG. And that isn’t even getting into its technical merits. Being XML based, it does make sense on the web since everything else is XML based too. But SVG is very slow when you compare it to other vector formats, and still has quite a ways to go.
As for CSS3, again, noone really supports it. Considering that very few browsers even pass the Acid2 test (which doesn’t even measure full css compliance), we have a way before CSS2 is fully supported before even bringing CSS3 into the picture. That being said, IE has quite a ways to go before it is where it needs to be with CSS. But don’t use SVG and CSS3 as a metric of how good a browser is.
Also, as I said in another post, IE7 was a huge step in the right direction, and now that the bug situation is reduced and the security situation is better, IE8 should have even more of a focus on CSS compliance. The IE team has said that the next version should ship within the year.
Your comments make alot of sense if you ignore IE7. IE6 was a travesty, and was carrying on a tradition of horrible browsers. The new IE team seems to really understand the problem though, and as I said, we have seen measurable progress with IE7.
(NOTE: I’m not really an IE fan, the only reason I know this stuff is because I am a professional web developer and I try to keep up to date with what is going on in the browser world. I use firefox both for personal use and for development, and I don’t think I could write javascript anymore without firebug.)
Edited 2007-12-14 18:33 UTC
my point was that IE is always behind by a long shot vs other browsers and giving microsoft past records i don’t expect to see any new updates soon.
I happen to agree the lawsuit is necessary, even though I don’t like Opera as a product.
Why? Last time I tried it, the complete lack of any mechanism to block advertising was a complete no-go for me. Since advertisers have unilaterally decided that jitter ads are a “good” thing, and since jitter ads make me physically nauseous, I could either not browse at all, or use Firefox and AdBlock. So I dropped Opera.
As I understand it, Opera the company still firmly believes that advertisers have a 100% right to use up as much of my screen as they want, and to use whatever tricks they want to get their message in my face. Tough. I disagree. As does my nervous system.
Now, with regards to the lawsuit, the monopoly holder is in fact holding back competition by deliberately “embracing, extending and extinguishing” public standards. They’re even going one step further, proposing a “standard” that is no such thing as it depends on and references completely proprietary, IP encumbered and technically secret (although they can be reverse engineered to some extent) document formats.
So I completely agree with the lawsuit – Microsoft must be forced to either adhere to standards or find some other way to mitigate it’s monopoly position. Howver, I have very little hope that it will get anywhere. Then again, EU consumer protection (because this is all about consumer protection) is much better than what’s available in North America, so we might get some positive results.
“Last time I tried it, the complete lack of any mechanism to block advertising was a complete no-go for me”.
I have blocked ads since the very begining. Just use a user style sheet. And now there’s yet another possibility, Opera has a “Content Blocker”.
“As I understand it, Opera the company still firmly believes that advertisers have a 100% right to use up as much of my screen as they want, and to use whatever tricks they want to get their message in my face. Tough. I disagree. As does my nervous system”.
You’re crazy.
“Now, with regards to the lawsuit”
It’s not a lawsuit.
Opera has a content blocker, and there are lots of other ways to block ads as well.
Despite being a major Opera-fan I don’t really support the unbundeling . I actually think MS should be allowed to include whatever software they want with their OS. It’s their OS and IE is to them a part of windows, just like Safari/Webkit to a certain extent is a part of OS X.
I think it’s great that the PC’s come with IE, this makes it so easy for me to tune into opera.com and download Opera on a re-installed PC.
However, I think that it’s great that they want to pressure MS to support webstandars. With IE7 it seems like they’re at least going in the right direction. Hopefully this pressure will speed things up.
When I’m making websites whatever works in Firefox works in Opera and vica versa, but IE always breaks it. I really hope this will get MS to fix their horrible browser.
“When I’m making websites whatever works in Firefox works in Opera and vica versa, but IE always breaks it. I really hope this will get MS to fix their horrible browser.”
Actually IE7 should not break your websites. It is quite funny though to look at a website designed to standards in both IE6 and IE7. In IE7 things display as they do in Firefox, but in IE6 they are all off. IE7 supports most of the current CSS standards properly, though it does still have issues.
Opera is not asking that computers come without a browser. They are asking for actual choice to be offered.
Whew, just readed all comments. It’s strange what everyone is commenting about. Someone said it’s impossible to uninstall IE? Yes, but… Start > Control Panel (Settings > Control Panel in classic menu) > Add/Remove programs > Add/Remove Windows Components > Internet Explorer . This Removes access to internet explorer. Later on, OEMs a few years now hast the possibility to change default browser. But why they need to bother doing that? IE works just fine, if you need something else go on and install it. Also from microsoft side they wrote the windows you don’t like that bite them. If you don’t like windows don’t use it and use what you like. I don’t see a problem on bundling IE on windows. Sure IE is crappy browser by standarts, but otherwise is fully functional.
And with windows media player example – Windows XP N edition (without media player), how much of these windows do you think were sold?
I fully believe that the MS team is as active, smart and desperate to support web standards as anyone else. Hakon’s open letter says much the same.
But they’re under the same corporate restraint as any other development team. If they don’t get the resources allocated, their hands are tied. MS should be focussing on developing IE to the standard that the web community are crying out for, not underresourcing it and leaving it to stagnate.
Actually they do, this is what they posted before IE7 came out http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx
Alot of things changed from IE6 to IE7.
Jeff Atwood (of Coding Horror fame) had a good quote on his blog awhile back. He said that MS is made of alot of intelligent, capable people, and most of the “They just don’t get it” problems stem from a ridiculesly convoluted process. Scoble described it as watching an old person getting ready to leave the house. First they check to see if they have their wallet, then check for their keys, then check that the stove is off, then check for their keys again, etc.. They develop a process that takes into account every problem that has occured to them. Same deal with MS, because of localization problems in the past, every check-in needs to be fully localized before it makes it into the trunk. Because of lawsuit’s for over some amusingly badly translated bits, all of those localizations need to be signed off on by a manager. Because of stability problems, it needs to be code reviewed and signed off on by a manager or three. Same thing for security problems. It ends up being this ponderous thing that totally gets in the way of the natural flow of good coding, and makes it very hard to actually get anything done.
The problem isn’t exactly alleviated by Microsoft Corp. still actively undermining open standards to replace them with their own crap (Silverlight/C#):
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2007/10/open_letter…
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es4-discuss/2007-October/001309.h…
Silverlight is a replacement of Flash, which is its own proprietary standard. IMO Flash was made for designers, which is why designers love working with it. It is also why programmers hate working with it. Silverlight is made for programmers from square 1, has a gpl implementation that microsoft is actually funding and helping develop, and has access to the entire .net library.
The links you linked to had nothing to do with silverlight (or C#), they were political stuff in the ES4 drama. This kind of thing actually happens all the time in standards boards. What happened was MS accused MoFo of trying to subvert web standards. the MoFo wants ES4 to be substantially different then ES3, MS wants it to remain relatively small because it is a scripting language that works pretty well now. The only reason that the MoFo is pushing for that is because they got what is probably the best javascript interpreter out there donated to them from adobe (actionscript in flash is basically a javascript variant), and they want to take advantage of it. MS wants it to stay small, because they spent 8 years not fixing bugs, and now that they have started they don’t want to be even more behind and need to implement something like the adobe interpreter.
Personally, I think that the MoFo has more of a leg to stand on. We are using javascript objects NOW, and assigning properties to a function isn’t exactly what I would call a clean OO implementation. Now that name attributes are deprecated for anything other then input tags, they took the rather nice DOM way of accessing elements, and now it is document.getElementById() or bust. This is why people love things like jquery so much, because it fills a massive void left by the removal of the name attribute. AJAX has become a part of daily scripting, but it almost requires the use of third party libraries wrapping a whole ton of cludgy stuff for you. The whole process could be alot more elegant.
But anyways, I love javascript and could talk about it all day (even if it is OT). All that to say, neither silverlight, nor the ES4 drama are evidence of MS doing their old “Embrace and extend” game.
They clearly shows that Microsoft is still doing its best to prevent standards from being successful, instead pushing their own proprietary technology.
Actually, Opera is part of the ES4 committee as well, and ES4 is specifically designed to be backwards compatible. If you want to use JS the old way you can still do it with ES4.
It seems that you have fallen for Microsoft’s FUD.
It is, because Microsoft is actively trying to undermine ES4 by lying, spreading FUD, and using other techniques.
Edited 2007-12-15 19:31
Tomorrow, if MS ported IE to linux, will linux distro bundle IE as firefox compititor? I doubt…
No. The license would not allow distribution by third parties :p
Anyway… let’s assume the license for this IE for Linux (eerrk!) allows for redistribution by third parties.
Yes. Since the distributions bundle Konqueror, Opera, Firefox, Seamonkey, dillo, links, elinks, lynx and whatnot I suppose they would bundle IE for Linux as well, They bundle half the world anyway so why not the other half?
BTW you can’t remove Konqueror from KDE bundle without severly breaking KDE and hence the desktop face.
apt-get uninstall konqueror removes whole lot other things…
LOL. Of course you can have KDE without Konqueror. You cannot have Konqueror without KDE but you can have KDE without Konqueror.
You may have to compile KDE yourself, but it is perfectly possible to have KDE without Konqueror. I don’t see the point though, but it is perfectly possible.
You can also have Gnome without Firefox or Seamonkey or gtkhtml or Epiphany or Webkit or whatever optional browser, you’d like.
Removing Konqueror from your ubuntu-installation (or is it apt-get for RPM you are using?) only breaks KDE because KDE is compiled that way. Consider it a bug.
I recently posted
Tomorrow, if MS ported IE to linux, will linux distro bundle IE as firefox compititor? I doubt…
This is completely irrelevant.
First of all, Firefox is more or less standards compliant (one of Opera’s complaints about IE).
Secondly, neither Linux or Firefox is a monopolist (Opera’s second complaint).
This is so blatantly pathetic on Opera’s part. Firefox has shown that by simply putting out a competant, decent, quality, however you want to put it product it can and does gain market share. Opera has no piece of the pie not because of some conspiracy, although I am sure this does play well in a certain crowd. They have no share because they simply do not have a good product. It is not like thousands of people have not downloaded and tried their browser, they have, and after they switched back to Firefox, Netscape, or IE. I remember way back before Firefox was released and during the initial 1.0 lifespan numerous people trying Opera and simply despising it. That is a bold statement when they do not prefer it, but actually despise it.
It is like anything else in this world, you want to compete in a market then you have to rely on quality, quantity, or price. Opera can not compete in any of these, so instead they wish the EC to do for them what they should do themselves.
The sad part of this is too many just can not see through their blinders because this involves Microsoft. There are no roadblocks to competition here, only the lack of good development and features. Most people I know switched to Firefox first and foremost because of the feature of tabbed browsing (interestingly IE now includes this some years later). For most this was unique, and gave good cause to switch. Just a minor example, but the point here is that Opera needs to show a reason why we should use their browser.
While some of you just love this ammunition to cry about Microsoft “the convicted monopoly”, I really do think you need to read up on what a monopoly is and does. Start by looking at the old Ma Bell. Most of you were not even born when Ma Bell ruled the US. To compare the two is laughable at best. Dominant market share certainly, but there is no obstacles for Opera’s entrance, and Firefox’s tremendous success clearly shows this.
And yet, after all these years (10 years of Mozilla attempts), MSIE still has 80% of the market and still has the power to lock users in, which Microsoft is still trying to do (Silverlight, C#, etc.).
Are you denying the fact that Microsoft has been convicted of illegal monopoly practices?
Oh, right. That must be why Nintendo came knocking on their door when they needed a browser.
Actually, Opera cannot compete at all because MSIE is bundled with the operating system, and Microsoft is doing everything in their power to prevent alternative browsers from gaining traction.
Competition must be on equal footing. But IE is not the most widely used browser because it is a quality browser. It is because it comes with Windows.
Actually, Opera for desktop is a free money (and Opera makes money from searches just like Mozilla). And this complaint is not just for Opera, but for all alternative browsers.
Actually, this is false, and the arguments for this complaints are valid indeed. It seems that it is you who are blinded by hatred towards Opera.
Apart from Microsoft’s illegal practices, and the fact that many sites still require MSIE due to Microsoft’s lock-in and proprietary technologies. My bank is merely one example.
Tremendous success? IE still has 80-90% market share, and many sites still require you to use IE.
Wake up and smell the coffee!
Edited 2007-12-15 19:31
This is not strictly on topic, but it is interesting.
Two or three days ago, some links in my web application disappeared in IE7. They were still visible in Firefox and IE6 and IE5.5. The links are the contents of the one-row table at the top of page, nothing fancy. Some of the table cells just became invisible.
Couple of days ago, the links are back, without any intervention. Clients machines are updated regularly, and, probably, it was about bad update.
The side effect was the tension between me and my client, that was caused by Microsoft. So, far as I am concerned, I hope they are going to be fined again. I am not antiglobalist or activist or something, but, if they harm my business, there is nothing wrong with somebody else harming theirs.