Last week, news got out that Microsoft had been charged with breaking competition laws by the European Commission. The EU stated that Microsoft has broken competition laws because it bundles its Internet Explorer browser with Windows, which gives the browser an unfair advantage over competing browsers such as Firefox and Opera. OSNews readers debated this topic lively, and it seems we can use this story to continue the discussion: Opera Software’s CEO Jon von Tetzchner joined in on the fun.
Opera, which first lodged the complaint to the EU in December 2007, in which the bowser maker asked the EU to force Microsoft to unbundle its IE web browser from Windows, as well as include other browsers with Windows. In addition, Opera wanted the EU to force Microsoft to better support web standards.
Not surprisingly, Von Tetzchner applauds the recent move by the EU. According to the CEO, it was time Microsoft “started competing on the merits in the browser market and letting consumers have a real choice of internet browsers.” “The Commission has confirmed that it will do what it can to make sure consumers are able to continue to freely enjoy one of the most important innovations in the history of humanity: the internet,” he wrote in a statement.
The statement further reads: “The Court of First Instance’s judgement was clear that Microsoft illegally tied Media Player to Windows. We are not surprised that the Commission has issued a Statement of Objections based on the principles in that judgement.” Opera also says that the browser is “the most important application on the PC.”
It’s of course not surprising that Opera is full of glee with the recent news. Opera has a hard time competing with open source browsers like Firefox and Chrome, the first of which is far more popular than Opera’s product. It remains to be seen whether or not a ruling in Opera’s favour would actually translate into more Opera installations.
I personally think it would only result in more success for Firefox. They have the brand, the momentum, the media attention. Opera doesn’t.
Well… web designers/master too!
Hey Opera, stop acting like a whiny little bitch and try actually fixing (or at least ACKNOWLEDGING) bugs that users report to you:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=263311
Regardless of whether Microsoft is guilty of any wrong doing, even if Internet Explorer wasn’t around, you would still be getting your ass handed to you by Firefox and Safari, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Edited 2009-01-19 22:32 UTC
did you read the statisics stuff that Opera released about useage of the web broswer? their are reasons that they choose not to do things about certain aspects and instead focus on other things. I can’t find the link but if you followed the Opera blog’s over teh last couple of years there are usage trends and the speach one is one of the least used feature (was in 8 anyways).
though i do feel for opera, so good and yet so underappreciated.
Well, that’s fine if they don’t want to support the feature anymore and feel that it’s not worth the resources it would take, but at LEAST come out and say so, and don’t just leave the feature broken as it is and not acknowledge anyone that asks about it.
If you want to fight illegal bundling, you should be going after OEM’s who have a deal to offer Windows on every computer exclusively. That is illegally bundling one product with another. I personally think it is unreasonable to ask Microsoft to make a competing browser the default browser on it’s OS. Or to hinder the usefulness of the OS by not including one at all.
I don’t think it’s any worse practice to bundle IE with Windows than it is to bundle Ice Weasel with Debian.
I would agree with you if IE were completely removable and replaceable. That it is not is more the issue than the fact that it’s bundled.
Browsers like Firefox/Iceweasel, Chromium, Safari, Opera, Konqueror and others are all stand-alone products upon which the OS and/or desktop environment has no dependance. Internet Explorer is difficult to remove, and several Windows components and other applications rely on it being there. You cannot remove IE without causing massive headaches. Even in KDE you can remove Konqueror and replace it with Dolphin and Firefox with minimal trouble should you wish.
Unchecking IE in add/remove programs does not actually uninstall the program, it simply hides the icons. If you “uninstall” IE then go to start -> run -> iexplore http://www.google.com, you’ll get Google in IE.
Unless you love dependency hell, you can’t remove KHTML on KDE. Or Webkit on Mac OS X. Windows already allows you to hide Internet Explorer, which to end users, that’s practically the same thing to the vast majority of end users.
Qt4 itself now contains a version of webkit (for desktop internal uses, this is not a web browser).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/12/trolltech_webkit/
I believe that this now means that Konqueror is easily removable from KDE4. Like so:
PS: On Kubuntu, doing this for real on a freshly-installed system would leave that system without a web browser.
To subsequently obtain web browser functionality back again, one could enter any of the following commands:
sudo apt-get install firefox
sudo apt-get install konqueror
sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser
sudo apt-get install dillo
sudo apt-get install seamonkey-browser
sudo apt-get install chimera2
sudo apt-get install galeon
sudo apt-get install links2
sudo apt-get install epiphany-gecko
sudo apt-get install kazehakse-webkit
Edited 2009-01-20 12:44 UTC
Webkit, a fork of KHTML, is still a web rendering engine, is it not? In the same way, Trident/MHTML is a vital part of Windows’ API. Yes, you could remove the small iexplorer.exe (and, since you could do that from Windows Explorer, it is even more intuitive than on KDE), but it is a small binary file anyway. Therefore, to the vast majority of consumers, there isn’t a meaningful difference between disabling IE (as you could do in Windows XP and Vista) and uninstalling it.
BTW, as for the importance of Trident/MSHTML, amongst the apps that depend on it are AIM (despite AOL owning Mozilla) and GTalk (despite Chrome and their close association with Firefox).
If a user doesn’t use Internet Explorer (or even disables it), I don’t see how things like Trident could be used to entrench Microsoft’s monopoly in the browser market.
On your first point … the version of webkit integrated into Qt isn’t a web browser. It can’t get data from the web by a user entering an arbitrary URL. It is used for things like displaying help. It is only ever “fed” with data internal to the OS. It therefore presents no “attack surface” for external parties to try to compromise the system.
If IE isn’t used, then it is still installed, and it can still get data from the web. If the user doesn’t use it, then other programs still can, and they can supply it with an arbitrary URL, and IE will still fetch it and process it. IE still presents an “attack surface” to external parties to try to compromise a system even if the user doesn’t use it himself/herself.
Edited 2009-01-20 23:50 UTC
This moaning about browsers is all well and good, but I think we’ve missed a much bigger problem here.. Opera is now making bowsers????
Mario and Luigi must be in a pink fit about this!
Microsoft is on hot coals over IE for two different reasons. First, they bought IE and then gave it away for free. They couldn’t have done this if it weren’t for their monopoly on the desktop. Then they added proprietary extensions to IE that integrated well into the OS. As a result, developers using IE and IIS could create web pages that did things no other browser was capable of. As a result, there was a barrier to entry against all other barriers. That is has taken SO long for someone to do something about it is horrible. That Microsoft is continuing this strategy with Silverlight is reason to avoid them.
There’s nothing wrong giving something away for free.
I really have no problems with IE being bundled with Windows. It’s stupid to not provide a default browser with any operating system. It should be uninstallable though.
If they didn’t provide one and expected us to install our choice of browser, how do we go about that since we cannot download one without an existing browser? Surely we don’t have to go out and get a magazine with a CD on the cover, or use the ftp command to download one?
I’m waiting for the day that some calculator software provider sues Microsoft for bundling calc.exe with Windows. :-\
You do NOT need a “browser” to download applications. Maybe they could use wget it has a gui frontend for windows and they ship it with the unix utils for win anyway or curl or a million other ways it would be a gui front end with GRAPHICAL pictures (thats what the G stands for lol) with the browsers icon and short synopsis you click it or a check a box and click DOWNLOAD and there it is on your desktop
Edited 2009-01-20 00:30 UTC
How would I download Firefox without a browser of some sort by default, be it a web or ftp?
How would I download Firefox without a browser of some sort by default, be it a web or ftp?
You’re kidding right?
My chosen OS comes with nothing but a terminal, no browser, no ftp client, not even a mouse driver let alone a GUI. Yet here I sit typing this reply in a full blown Firefox and every other imaginable tool you could ask for on a computer. How is this possible? Must be magic?
Indeed. You have shown us that all those things (GUI, browsers, all that crap) are superfluous and ought to be unbundled from Windows. I’m sure it is easy enough for the average Windows user to install what they want, no?
Well, we did it back in the days of Windows 3.x, and back in the days of Windows 9x, and back in the days of Windows NT, don’t see why it would suddenly be so different now. It’s not like you lose all network connectivity when you remove the browser. Nor do you lose the CD/DVD drive, nor do you lose the USB ports.
And just because these apps wouldn’t come on the Windows CD, doesn’t mean the OEM can’t install something or include a CD with options that the user can install.
What is with the attitude that “everything must be pre-installed, otherwise the user won’t know it exists”? People may be dumb, but they’re not retarded. And it’s precisely this attitude that is making them dumber!
If you’re expecting average people to use ftp or wget from the shell, then you’re on something.
But why? Because Opera is whining and Neelie Kroes has yet to remove the bug from her butt?
This may have made more sense several years ago, when IE6 was still king, web content was languishing and security was a nightmare. But now, competition in the browser market is better than it has ever been and it’s only getting better.
The fact that, out of the “major” browsers, Opera is the only one not to have a home on any of my computers says more about Opera than it does about Microsoft, IE or anything else.
Why? I think as long as microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop and we all know they do. They have to play by different rules. And bundling of APPLICATIONS not core operating system functions are one of those areas where they will be different. Of the two major applications browsers and media players are the two that stand out the most. They allow miscrosoft to EXTEND their monopoly from the desktop to in the case of the browser the internet. And in the media player media like audio and video files. ie6 WAS a nightmare like you mentioned and it was the reason so many flocked to firefox and continue to do so out of loyalty.. many if not most of the users of firefox are geeks etc who fix their family and friends pcs for free and what gets installed on them of course is firefox… So basicly the only reason firefox got any momentum was ppl were almost unable to use their pc in some cases with ie… People WILL just use what comes with their pc unless it DOESNT WORK or only works with great dificulty.
Howto download wget without IE?
Opera’s complaint, and this EU Accusation, is not about bundling of IE with the OS.
Rather, it is about IE not following web standards, and IE being un-installable at the same time. Given the monopoly position of Microsoft on the desktop, this tends to create a situation where web users feel that they must use IE, and hence Windows, in order to be able to view everything they might encounter on the web.
Silverlight is but the latest instance of this sort of thing.
It is an offence, for a monopoly company, to use their monopoly position in one market (ie. desktop OS market) to create an advantage in another market (in this case, browsers).
It would be perfectly fine for Microsoft to bundle a browser with their desktop OS that was either: (a) un-installable, or (b) strictly standards compliant with no “extensions”. No “IE-only” stuff allowed.
Since IE is neither (a) nor (b), hence this lawsuit. Opera, and the EU, have a sound point here, it seems to me.
For what it’s worth I think it should be uninstallable and standards compliant as well, but I don’t agree bundling it with Windows is wrong as long as the two points above are met.
True uninstallation would break things like HTML-renderer software installer programs (especially the new ones which display fancy frames).
Standards change. If WinXP were standards compliant upon launch (circa 2001) then it would be non-compliant before Vista (circa 2007/2008)… unless the notion of “standards” are “cemented community-driven standards which never, ever, ever change.”
The complaints against Microsft are a bit extreme. Opera has been around forever; if their product has not been as popular than it’s their fault… but I guess their playbook is entitled “Business In Europe by RealPlayer: if nobody likes it, then sue your competition through the EU commission.”
Why the hell should a software installer rely on an HTML renderer? I had to temporarily use an HP 3940 printer with an old Windows 98 machine, and the setup program insisted that it needed a higher version of Internet Explorer. Fortunately using the add hardware wizard side-stepped the whole problem.
I did an installation of a HP-printer some time ago, it complained there waren’t 512 MB of RAM.
euh… right.
I don’t understand HP. The download file for the latest driver for one of their all-in-one inkjet/scanners is over 200 MB. And that’s without all the extra software. Who needs 200 MB to tell a printer/scanner how to print/scan? Boggles the mind!
Just the printer driver for a lot of their laser printers is over 50 MB for a lot of models. Lexmark’s universal PS3 driver is under 5 MB and covers over a dozen printers.
it would still be just as compliant as before, it would just be complient with older standards, like HTML, Ecmascript (javascript), css, whatever.
I have to agree on the Opera popularity comment. I’ve tried to use it as my primary browser many times and I simply don’t like it. I hear these sorts of comments echo’d around the Internet forums and at work.
Opera was simply too clunky and ugly, was a pay-for product for far too long and had basically no advertising to penetrate the market. Opera’s lack of popularity is it’s own fault.
Right on the spot. I can only agree with this.
This is the reason why Silverlight is the new move in the same game. The game of crippleling anything but Microsoft Windows. The only one that can implement a rather crappy version of Silverlight is Novell – an “associated partner” of Microsoft, so Microsoft is assured they are in full control of the only “implementation” for Linux.
Same old practices again..
This is how it should work …..
1)You set up your internet connection
2) A dialog box comes up and asks which browser would you like to install
2a) you can choose from the “major browsers”
2b) or you can put your own custom url to download from
Which is sort of like how the search providers feature works in ie7…….
3) Your Browser/Browsers (you should be able to choose multiple if that is your choosing) are installed.
The browser is used by applications to display Readme.html and rendering other wizard-like dialog boxes BEFORE ever connecting online (like drivers or OEM-bundled apps).
Who is responsible for the dialog box, its appearance, its contents, and its download locations. How does it get updated as products are released?
How can the dialog box be cross-platform (if it’s a winning offering)? It’d surely rely on an HTML rendering engine which Win/Mac/Linux OSes can all support? Oh, and ASUS already has EXPRESSGATE which does the minimalist version of this.
Going in the ASUS direction: it’s Linux and its @ boot. ExpressGate loads before any OS. So the fact that Windows has IE is irrelevant: a user is already prompted to browser online using Linux and Firefox. TOO BAD, OPERA!!!
Installing all (multiple) browsers defeats the purpose; the solution is not future-proof either. How are third-party browser developers (some OSS projects) supposed to get into the mix? Would consumer desktops simply get overwhelmed with 3-7 icons for browsing the Internet alone?! That’s unreasonable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo
http://www.dillo.org/
This type of small application (350KB) is all that is needed to display HTML help pages and to download a full-featured browser of choice.
This is so small it can easily remain on the system (say for the purposes of displaying HTML help and the like) after a proper, full-featured browser (possibly one made by a company other than the OS vendor, or even an open source alternative, if the owner of the machine so chooses) is chosen and downloaded.
All that is needed for that purpose is a Dillo-like small application. There would be no objection to retaining something like that, as long as it was W3C compliant insofar as it went.
Edited 2009-01-20 03:54 UTC
I edited my original reply see above
Opera is a W3C standards-compliance monopoly. They are abusing their position by being politically protectionist and having the EU incur harm to Opera’s competition; in this case, Microsoft.
Saying MS is the bad guy is akin to blaming a software developer for implementing features most developers have requested. In this case, standard Web-enabled technologies for ISV’s to leverage and rely upon (NOT necessarily standard-compliant but MUST be documented). This allows ebooks (CHM or compressed HTML), help documentation, and experimental techniques (ActiveX Web Control, XMLHttpRequest/AJAX) to be supported and make the newer versions of Windows value-added beyond a bug fix or two.
Ostensibly, removing the IE components would cause negative side-effects: CHM files would not work reliably, for starters. The global Windows community would have to turn the clock back 10 years (oh the “good ol’ days”) and that’s an absurd way of approaching business or technology (hello, dial-up user, you’ve got mail!).
Third-parties have built adaptive technologies to make Web browsing easier for impaired consumers; Opera should blame THEM for having lower penetration rates for those features. HEY OPERA: The US GOV’T has REQ’S before it allows an OS to be deployed; adaptability is one of them… without relying on outside technologies or connectivity to have them work! SUE THE US GOVT IF YOU’RE THAT BOTHERED!
In any case, Opera is/was fetching for compliments because the technology world is much different in 2009 than it was in 1999. Lycos is not suing Google for being a kick-ass search engine; Apple is not suing Microsoft for porting Excel to Windows; RIM is not suing Nokia for having a Third-World accessible telephone.
STOP WHINING, FIX YOUR BUGS, and MAKE THE BROWSER AT LEAST HALF-WAY PRETTY!!!
Edited 2009-01-20 03:27 UTC
You don’t know the meaning of monopoly, do you?
If Opera actually worked well and performed good maybe they would have a bigger user base and wouldn’t have to start up crap like this.
Hey Opera CEO: Your browser sucks, go take a lesson from FireFox, Safari, and (name your browser here).
Personally I like all the features in OmniWeb and Camino for Mac. Which brings up another question, why is all this bull directed at MS when Apple does the same thing with OSX?
The reason Opera is happy about this development is not because (or not only because) its an opportunity to grab at some market share – contrary to popular belief, that’s not where Opera makes their money.
If Opera depended on its Desktop browser for money, they’d be quickly going down the tube. But Opera is doing well. So well they’re still hiring developers even now, amidst people like Google firing people.
Opera’s main business is their browser engine, which is licensed and sold on the basis of it being the most standards compliant thing out there. They use their desktop users to test their engine. They don’t leave out their userbase either which is admirable – the new 10 alpha is all about answering rants on their forums about missing features.
So of course Opera is happy because a destabilizing of the MS non standards compliant browser monopoly helps sell the standards compliance of their engine better.
And also they’re geeks
they can’t help it 
fsck sake.. why are you all still complaining about this again and again? This is how Microsoft wants to do it, or how they do it.. You don’t like it, then switch to another OS, or keep it installed, but use another browser, and grow up/move on…
If you don’t like it then you could go sell your OS only on countries with no laws protecting fair competition.
Though it is rather rich that a “monopoly” who saw its market share shrink to 70% (or even less) be subjected to “fair competition law”.
Considering how it climbed there to begin with, it’s quite adequate.
If I committed say tax fraud, losing everything I earned wouldn’t make me any less liable.
1. Violation of competition law is very different from violation of tax laws. Tax laws are prescriptive – you can follow it to the letter. Competition laws are subjective to the case – without any precedent case, it is hard to ascertain for sure if you’re a monopoly (especially when courts no longer define it as near or complete control of a market) and if you’re acting illegally.
2. The rise of Firefox shows very clearly that Microsoft’s monopoly is neither strong or sustainable or obtainable just by bundling with Windows. IE ascended simply because their competition wasn’t capable enough – can anyone honestly say that Netscape 4.x was superior to IE 4.x? Microsoft’s main competitor then went into a long-drawn rewrite process that produces Netscape 6 years after losing the market.
It shows the original reasoning in the antitrust case was flawed. If IE’s rise can be solely explained by its bundling with Windows, it follows that Microsoft has a monopolistic power in that market. It also follows that though matter how good a competing product is, IE’s position in Windows would ensure its monopolistic position. All turning out to be false.
IE still remains entrenched in the corporate market, where apps are tied to the technologies Microsoft introduced through IE (which was probably the whole point of the browser itself: a mean to turn their proprietary tech into a de facto standard).
It’s only outside there that alternative browsers are slowly eroding IE’s marketshare, and just because MS let IE stagnate on a crappy version 6 for far too long.
The fact that after half a decade of being a crappy security risk that wasn’t even half as good as the competition IE still holds 70% of the market, clearly shows how much the Windows monopoly helped IE.
What makes you think the competition had any better security? Netscape would have gone down in flames to many of the same attacks which plagued IE in the 5.0-6.5 timeframe.
Disagree, Netscape did not do the highly risky ActiveX integration for example.