Tuesday, January 15th 2008
Microsoft Investigated Again in Europe
The European Commission, fresh from a major court victory over Microsoft, launched new antitrust investigations into the software giant on Monday, on suspicion it abused its market dominance. Investigators will see whether Microsoft broke competition rules to help its Web browser and its Office and Outlook products, after complaints from Norwegian Web browser company Opera and a coalition of technology firms including IBM, Nokia Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and Oracle Corp. The European Commission opened two formal probes. The first one - triggered by a complaint from Norway's Opera Software ASA - will look at whether Microsoft illegally gives away its Internet Explorer browser for free with Windows. Opera had called on the EU to strip Internet Explorer out of Windows or carry alternative browsers. The second investigation will examine whether Microsoft withheld information from companies that wanted to make products compatible with its software - including Office word processing, spreadsheet and office management tools, some server products and Microsoft's push into the Internet under the name of the .NET framework. Microsoft said it would cooperate fully: "We are committed to ensuring that Microsoft is in full compliance with European law and court obligations," it said in a statement.
Sources:
eitb24, Yahoo! News
89 Comments on Microsoft Investigated Again in Europe
I was writing all that in a review style comment not in the marketing kind. Anybody can use whatever browser it wants, at a certain level it's relative to the user's taste.
For me and most of my clients that I introduce Opera to (I work in IT hardware/software service) there is no way back to other browsers, I dislike bloatware in general and until the other browsers are optimized I'll continue to use it.
I was a FF supporter up to a certain version.. then things changed. If Opera will be the crappy browser I'll just defend the next best browser.
I'm not a Opera fanboy, but I am upset to see people bashing it for reasons like "it's uglier!" or "has different shortcut keys".
Everybody has the right to choose his/her favorite browser. Yes, if you're careful and you don’t like to swim with the sharks (warez sites, porn and so on) and if you're not upset that a page renders 3 seconds later than it should, you could just use IE...
By the way, I am sure that many surf for porn and warez these days :)
However a few months ago FF had more security flaws than IE. I have all 3 browsers installed however I do not trust FF or IE (yet) for my credit card transactions.
At this exact time this is the security status of the most common browsers:
IExplorer 7.x: 7 security holes; - Status: Moderately critical (3 of 5)
FireFox 2.x: 4 security holes; - Status: Less critical (2 of 5)
Opera 9.x: 0 security holes; - Status: Normal (0 of 5)
Safari 2.x: 3 security holes; - Status: Less critical (2 of 5)
Konqueror 3.x: 2 security holes; - Status: Moderately critical (3 of 5)
I do not want everybody to start using Opera just like that and I am certainly not trying to convince btarunr that he should just hop right back in Opera wagon just because I think it’s the better browser at the moment. Like I said it’s about personal taste at this point.
I just want to raise the level of awareness of the general public about how things really are, and about how much Opera Software contributed to what the internet is right now. I bet that many features that it has currently implemented will eventually be integrated in the other browsers, as it has happened until now.
Back on topic now, as this discussion has derailed a bit, I think it's ok for Microsoft to bundle it's explorer as version 7 is user friendly and is a huge leap (partially because it has "borrowed" code from FF and because it has a rather cleaned up interface now).
Honestly I'd hate to have Opera or FireFox trying to make the internet standards. The companies just aren't big enough to pull it off. Maybe if they pulled together a coalition of major companies to create an internet standard that would work.
However it's good to see that you are being mature and moderate about it, and that you aren’t one to see things just in black and white...
If its going to be an all out war on it though, I was just saying MS has the most ground to stand on to standardize.
Unfortunately in my opinion Opera isn't helping a standardization out.