The European Union has never liked Microsoft. The recent ruling that Microsoft’s inclusion of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system was an antitrust violation is the most recent in a long line of blows against American technology firms, only this time the EU has imposed a result with some teeth. Back when Microsoft got a wrist slapping for having Windows Media Player bundled with the OS, the Redmond company was told to allow OEMs to choose the media software they wanted to install. Not wanting to actually do any work, they just kept Windows Media Player.
This time, however, the EU is requiring Microsoft to include a a bunch of browsers with its operating systems in addition to Internet Explorer. When a user first starts Windows 7 in the EU, they’ll be greeted with a screen presenting them with a choice of default browsers to pick. So far, we know that Mozilla, Google, and those whiny babies at Opera have been in talks with the European Commission to decide with browsers to include.
I call Opera whiny babies because they raised concerns over Microsoft’s inclusion of IE in the first place, and have thus made something pretty damn stupid happen. The result of Microsoft’s bundling IE was that people who wanted another browser would use it to install one. Hell, Firefox became the most popular browser in Europe under this system.
So what will this choose-on-startup system do? It’ll widely encourage users to not adopt new browsers! The fact that 35% of Europe users Firefox is a breakthrough, and due to what? Because users learned that when you get a machine running IE, you go out there and find something better. Now that Firefox will be an option on computers out of the box, expect to just see more of a monopoly. This is a slap in the face to Microsoft, but it also completely contradicts the point of an antitrust ruling which was designed to deal prevent browser supremacy via bundling. So nice going, the EU. Thanks for ruining everything.
