EU Abandons Decade-Long Microsoft Antitrust Case
EU Abandons Decade-Long Microsoft Antitrust Case
Posted 12/16/2009 at 10:20am
| by Paul Lilly
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Before Rudolph and company head for the skies next week, you may spot a flying pig or two gliding through the clouds. That's the sort of thing that tends to happen when the world turns topsy-turvy, as it seemingly has after the European Commission announced today that it has settled its remaining antitrust issues with Microsoft and is abandoning its case against the software giant.
The two sides have been in dispute for the better part of a decade, and as it turns out, all Microsoft had to do was agree to a legally binding commitment to start marketing rivals' browsers next to its own Internet Explorer.
"Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use," said Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.
A curious statement, considering European consumers have had that choice all along, as did anyone else who chose to run Windows. But regardless of Kroes' poor choice of wording, the issue at hand was the belief that Microsoft was stifling innovation by only including Internet Explorer in Windows, which gave the company a distribution advantage that didn't necessarily reflect a superior browser.
Under terms of the agreement, Microsoft will deliver a ballot screen consisting of its own Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera Software's ASA browser for a five-year period. In addition, OEMs will be allowed to decide for themselves which browser to pre-install, and may turn IE off completely, if they so wish, the Commission said.
Image Credit: thenextweb.com
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winmaster
December 19, 2009 at 11:23am
Microsoft lost this case, but consumers are the real loosers. Now, instead of Europeans firing up their new PC and being able to just go on the internet, they will now have to first go through a stupid browser ballot. They will wonder why thier PC doesn't just go online, when mac's can. This was a non-issue until the EU started sticking their heads where they don't belong-inside of Microsoft's ass. I'm glad I don't live in Europe. Every modern OS ships with a web browser that you can just use. If I want a different one, I don't need a browser ballot to help me. As for my mother, why can't she use IE, its not like she'll notice the difference.
Europeans officially piss me off now.
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The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
weaslem32
December 16, 2009 at 4:22pm
What's really irritating about this whole thing is that Windows is Microsofts own software. If they want to bundle their own Internet browser with it, who cares? It's their software and they own it. Why in the hell would they even consider bundling a competitors browser anyway. If people don't like IE, then they will install a different one. No one is telling Apple that they can't bundle the Safari browser with OS X. What about Firefox with Ubuntu? As long as you can unistall it from the OS, then it should be fine. Next thing you know they are going to start bitching that they include Paint or Wordpad instead of something else. If someone doesn't like it, then use a different piece of software or change OS's. I can't stand governments who get involved with issues they have no business dictating.
metropolis has you.
nsvander
December 16, 2009 at 6:28pm
The problem is that in the past you had to go through hoops to uninstall IE, it was not just a simple click on Add/Remove Programs and click remove like you can with any other browser you install. Also running windows update was not an option with any other browser as M$ used active X to allow the Windows Update program to run, FireFox does not use ActiveX so therefore you would not be able to run WU from with in FireFox.
nekollx
December 17, 2009 at 11:16am
except that changed with Vista which happend like 3 years ago
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bathtbgin
December 16, 2009 at 12:11pm
What amazes me about all of this MS anti-trust stuff is that its all because of the web browser, which is FREE!. The only company that I ever remember actually trying to sell a web browser was Netscape, and that pretty much stopped after IE started shipping with windows.
nekollx
December 16, 2009 at 11:10am
Good now go after Apple EU for the EXACT SAME THING
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