EU Slams Microsoft Over Lack of Browser Choice

[IronMit]

snip insane rambling

Here in Europe we actually don't let companies buy our politicians or set our policies. So if a company is close to a monopoly, we bring them down. Hard to understand for a Yank, I'm sure. Your servile attitude towards the divine job creators is sickening.

We just let the EU make over 60% of each individual countries laws instead.
Let the politicians pander to the media. Rupert Murdoch controlling UK leaders for 2 decades.
Pay a random amount to the EU for something 99% of the population doesn't understand.

EU isn't much better then the states...it's easy to see the propaganda machine when you are standing outside of it.

 

[spwatkins]

So other companies were *charging money* for internet browsers and Microsoft decided to provide one *for free* thereby forcing all other browsers to come for free as well. Those greedy monopolistic bastards!

 

[The White Hunter]

You should but it's an American company in America. So long as it makes money for America the US government will give no shit what it does and does not do. It's like that whole Apple vs Samsung thing that was decided by a court about an hours drive from where Apple's lair is. We all knew how Samsung had no hope of winning that mess.

Though here it's more clean cut. I don't care about the monopolistic bullshit but dear god save people that awful trip into IE to get a good browser!

I keep the latest firefox install data on a pen drive to avoid that horrific torture.

I live in Canada... I wonder if we can do anything about it here in our communist country. I also keep a copy of the Firefox installer on my USB drive. Nothing more painful than having to navigate through a virus-ridden IE MSN homepage to download something when repairing a client's computer.

That sounds like some kinda of horrific nightmare. I wanna visit Canada, it seems intriguing to me, so laid back next to america yet you have uber concentrated pockets of extremist maniacs dotted about the place. Rather than the US where they're a bit more thinly spread.

 

[silverbullet1989]

they gave me the option to download a different browser when i installed windows 7 sp1? am i missing something here? i live in the uk or it this something effecting mainland Europe?

 

[elvor0]

Err why? I hate Internet Explorer as much as the next man, but it's such a trivial affair to just download chrome, I don't see why they should be forced to include other browsers.

 

[Okulossos]

Here in the EU we live in a first world country with true first world problem. Unlike in the US, where people whine about finally getting health-care, we make something of our time. We take a look at the market to see if any of those big, bad, money-taking companies is doing something bad. ... And from behind the screen of our hipster-Macbook which like totally does not come from a big bad company, but from steve jobs who died for our MS-sins we look down upon all those Bad, terrible MS-products to judge the terror we witness.

MS has been packaging something with their product that they made themselves? Well, that can't be right! Just look at apple, they don't package something MS made, they only package what apple made and that must be a good thing, because... steve jobs died for humanity and hipstmanity!

Thus we will see that this software-hell parishes before our eyes by making MS put a program onto Our versions of their software which will hence annoy the living s*** out of anyone who dares to setup a new system...

Ok, all fun aside, this is just one giant mountain of piled BS.
If people truly wanted choice they would use Linux, MS make software which is at least compatible with almost any program you will ever want to download... IF there is a company that gags and tied up their customers it would be apple.

Now what bothers me most about this is, that the IE is not the leading webbrowser in the EU anyway, that would be Firefox.

/edit.: I wonder why so many people use Chrome, haven't they checked where all their browsing data and bookmarks are being stored and what kind of connections chrome builds? I mean: its not a secret, you can read about it everywhere...

 

[godofallu]

Snip

Most likely Linux would have gained 4-500million users, and it would have started serious competition against Windows, and people were gonna start talking about how much better Linux is now that it has all the good of Linux and is also able to play games (As game developers 'arent' gonna drop 4-500million users on the floor) And Americans would start switching over and after that China. And in the end Microsoft would just be Xbox and a company desperately trying to compete with a better OS on the PC.

Oh yeah Microsoft would never just pull out of Europe. I mean that would lose them billions upon billions in lost sales just from PC's alone. I don't really agree with your crazy Linux would takeover the world/America and Asia theory; but hey whatever floats your boat.

 

[Anti-Robot Man]

Apple is a far worse offender than MS in this, on ios the only browser available is Safari - the other "browsers" available like Chrome are just reskins.

I can understand the EU intercession in the 90's against MS (though it turned out to be unnecessary by the time they were done), but the law should be applied fairly - Apple seems to be getting away with murder comparatively.

 

[Wintermoot]

are people that stupid that they can't pick and download their own browser?

 

[GrungyMunchy]

I guess they DID sign an agreement that they aren't honoring for whatever reason. the European Union is well within it's rights to charge the fine.

But really, EU, really? Did Internet Explorer prevent England from using your currency? Is Internet Explorer responsible for Switzerland not joining your Country Club? Are you going to start blaming WW2 on IE now?

"Hello. My name is European Union... you killed my father... prepare to die!"

>.>

Psst... PSSST.... hey EU... I can't help but notice that the Browser Selection Screen... OPENS IN INTERNET EXPLORER! You're tainted by the IE disease from the get-go.

---

You know what this looks like to me?Given that the European Union has to date fined Microsoft ?1.64 billion (US$2.1 billion) for various offenses, a fine for this particular breach wouldn't mark a huge deviation from the norm.It looks like the EU is searching for every tiny little thing to justify stealing money from Microsoft.

I'm gonna bump this comment since everyone should be able to have a laugh from it.

 

[Xaryn Mar]

are people that stupid that they can't pick and download their own browser?

In short: Yes.
Or at least most people are. Especially the older generation (i.e. our parents and grandparents) who make up the majority of the workforce.
Most of them don't even know what a browser is and belive that the little blue e (internet explorer) icon is the internet.

 

[Petromir]

snip insane rambling

Here in Europe we actually don't let companies buy our politicians or set our policies. So if a company is close to a monopoly, we bring them down. Hard to understand for a Yank, I'm sure. Your servile attitude towards the divine job creators is sickening.

We just let the EU make over 60% of each individual countries laws instead.
Let the politicians pander to the media. Rupert Murdoch controlling UK leaders for 2 decades.
Pay a random amount to the EU for something 99% of the population doesn't understand.

EU isn't much better then the states...it's easy to see the propaganda machine when you are standing outside of it.

Nice pulling numbers out of your arse?

Even at its most prolific rate the EU would need centuries to be close to 60% of UK laws. That's ignoring the fact that certainly the Blair government in a quiet patch easily outstripped the EU in law making.

The EU may have loads of issues but as a law making body it's really not efficient enough to make it into double figures in law making.for most of the major EU governments.

 

[A-D.]

Actually its rather hilarious that the ones slinging mud against the EU for the whole thing are those people who have no idea what the hell they are talking about to begin with, its like the whole reverse-Anti-US-Bush Thing that was going on, except its more sad now.

You know this ruling isnt new, right? Its actually couple of years old, Microsoft agreed to it, so they also have to do it, if they dont, they get called on it. If i lend you money and you promise to pay me back then i WILL hold you to that. But why does that ruling exist? To prevent Microsoft from establishing a true complete Monopoly on the PC Market, in short "closed System", including Hardware. Meaning they would be Apple, just worse. Imagine never having a choice what graphics card you could use, what monitor, what games you could play and yes, which browser to use. Microsoft decides for you, you get no choice. And because by that point MS already was close to a monopoly due to the amount of People using their products, i.e. Windows at the time..well you can see where that goes. In fact MS tried to push out Apple AND Linux from the whole PC Platform entirely.

So no, without that ruling and similar, Microsoft would be more draconian than Apple is with their Mac, and according to old Data from back then, could also easily spy on you. Origin reading your Vacation Pics? Microsoft had planned worse than that. Just saying.

Its not there just for the "lulz".

 

[Naeras]

Great.

Now, can they do this to other companies with similar practices? Like, say, Apple?

 

[Slayer_2]

That sounds like some kinda of horrific nightmare. I wanna visit Canada, it seems intriguing to me, so laid back next to america yet you have uber concentrated pockets of extremist maniacs dotted about the place. Rather than the US where they're a bit more thinly spread.

Yeah, it's usually a minute plus wait just for the MSN homepage to load up. The only extremist maniacs we have here are the anti-oil eco-crazies. Thankfully they aren't armed or dangerous, unless you're a cop.

 

[Ryujikun]

This is just dumb. Oh the horror of having to use internet explorer to download another preferred browser. Maybe they should just keep their favorite EXE on a thumb drive and save it some place secure. I wonder if they know they should be using a complete different operating system then oh wait Apple does the same thing with Safari...

To everyone asking why this is an issue, several browsers back in the 90's, including one called Netscape, required you to buy a license before using them. Microsoft decided to undercut the competition by producing their own browser for free and bundling it with their OS product - the massive market share they had on the desktop market meant that this totally undercut the competition's business model, causing them to go out of business and giving Microsoft an effective monopoly.

Anyway, the EU courts didn't take too kindly to that and are making sure it doesn't happen again. The only thing the EU needs to do is hurry up their anti-trust investigations for Google, intensify it for facebook, and maybe adopt a sane model on copyright, and they will be perfect.

I see so the law is outdated. I like being browse the internet free. I already pay for internet why do I have to pay someone else so I can look around? So your saying is that Microsoft did us a favor and made the market for free web browsers. If people were still charging for browsers then I can see this being a problem, but now that's its free and even if you don't want to use internet explorer, to get a different browser you can even go straight to the competition website and download it and never use the IE again.

 

[Nikolaz72]

Snip

Most likely Linux would have gained 4-500million users, and it would have started serious competition against Windows, and people were gonna start talking about how much better Linux is now that it has all the good of Linux and is also able to play games (As game developers 'arent' gonna drop 4-500million users on the floor) And Americans would start switching over and after that China. And in the end Microsoft would just be Xbox and a company desperately trying to compete with a better OS on the PC.

Oh yeah Microsoft would never just pull out of Europe. I mean that would lose them billions upon billions in lost sales just from PC's alone. I don't really agree with your crazy Linux would takeover the world/America and Asia theory; but hey whatever floats your boat.

Yes they would, have you seen that Penguin? His evil. Monopolistic Superpower waiting to happen.

 

[Major_Tom]

Typical EU, bickering over some insignificant bullsh...
***The post has been interrupted by the Croatian government, we will now shower this user with endless EU propaganda***

 

[Pebkio]

Here in Europe we actually don't let companies buy our politicians or set our policies. So if a company is close to a monopoly, we bring them down. Hard to understand for a Yank, I'm sure. Your servile attitude towards the divine job creators is sickening.

So I assume the European Union is just absolutely refusing to deal with Apple. I mean, you just pointed out that Microsoft was about to follow Apple's business model and insinuated it's a Monopoly(tm). Since monopolistic practices are so taboo out there, I'm sure iPhones are just banned outright.

I don't supposed you've read enough of my other posts in various other topics to know this, but I'm quite outspoken against the very concept of corporations. So when your EU acts silly enough to make me side with a corporation, then the "silly" is off the charts.

What you, and many fail to understand. Is that a larger ammount of people still use IE because its the default and some people dont even know that there are alternatives (Dont get into what kind of people, you know them. They barely know how to turn on the computer in the first place, they will be gone in about 20-50 years). This gives Microsoft an advantage. An advantage that, Europe has found unfair for a long time as it seems to be an attempt to monopolize, just as Windows 8 which closes off and heavily restricts other DDS seems to be an attempt to monopolize. That the US doesnt punish microsoft for that because they are cowards, is their own problem.

To top it off, its near impossible for people to delete the damn thing. So yea, Microsoft is by the very definition of the literal meaning of the word, forcing Explorer on millions of users.

So... we should keep suing Microsoft... because there are lazy and stupid people in the world? Sure, I remember when Microsoft took advantage of the poor business practices of other companies... in the 90s. But we're coming up on the "20 years later" fade-in...

Okay, I gotta ask, why is Europe allergic to IE? Most of us in non-EU countries don't care about IE. We use it to get Firefox or something else and then remove all the shortcuts. The more techy of us know how to remove it so they do. I personally use it when visiting a site I've never been to before... because I've removed all of it's ability to open scripts or run Java. I can check the site before I let it load processes on my machine.

The program itself takes up a huge amount of harddrive space, though, so I can totally see how you can complain about the massive 4.36 GB. Oh wait... I'm sorry, it only takes up 4.36 MB. Thpppt.

I'm going to stick to my earlier stance that the EU is dredging up a 20-year-old contract clause that's not very relevant to anyone anymore(except the dumb-ass demographic) just to take another billion euros from Microsoft.