Microsoft caves to EU pressure, will offer browser ballot | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft caves to EU pressure, will offer browser ballot

arstechnica.com

10 pointsZeroGravitas8 comments

Here's Microsoft's official statement, along with an document detailing their specific terms (the top 10 browsers with a marketshare over 0.5%) and a ppt of a mockup of the ballot page.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-24sta...

I wonder why is Apple is not treated the same as MS. In other words why no noise over Apple bundling Safari with MacOS or iPhone etc. EU should ask Apple to do the same with Mac OS also. A smaller marketshare should not be an excuse for implementation (or not) of law and policies.

What MS did was evil back when it killed Netscape, I cannot even dream of defending them for that, but let's get over it and treat all OS vendors equally.

It's a matter of market share. If apple really ever took over, they'd face similar problems.

I'll agree that what Microsoft did to Netscape was wrong, but I don't see how either offering several browsers or requiring Windows to ship without Internet Explorer is needed. If people don't like Internet Explorer they can easily download a variety of other browsers. While it may have been difficult for someone with little computer experience to do such a thing a few years ago, I find it hard to believe that people can't figure this out for themselves these days.

Anti-trust law requires a monopolist to not make use of their monopoly position in one market to gain advantages in another. Assuming one accepts that there is an independent market for browsers, and that Microsoft has a monopoly position, it's pretty hard to argue that pre-installing their own browser does not make use of their monopoly situation to gain advantages in another market.

That users can download other browsers is irrelevant from the point of view of anti-trust unless you can show that users would make the same browser choices when one of the browsers is pre-loaded as they would if they had to explicitly pick one.

While the end-goal is to ensure consumers are not deprived choice with the resulting problems, the direct objective of anti-trust law is to protect the competitors of monopolists, regardless of whether the short-term effect on consumers is negative, as the long term detrimental effects of trusts are seen as too great (through direct experience with a large number of them...)

Apple isn't a monopoly, monopolies are treated differently

I've always thought the browser-based antitrust cases were ridiculous. There was a huge demand for web browsers, and Microsoft included one for free with its OS. It made Windows way more useful right out of the box.

I agree. It seems that the result of this is that Microsoft cannot make a better product (by adding value) rather than helping consumers.

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