[Macworld]

Post your comments for EU: Microsoft 'shields' IE from competition here

[context]

What crap. It takes all of 3 minutes to download and install an alternate browser.
Europeans have a genuine reason to fear the political monopoly, enforced by brute force, which is the European Union.

[k2director]

Thank goodness we have the benevolent EU to protect us from this dangerous world we live in, filled with bundled browsers and all. Really, I was a little skeptical of the EU's relevance when it couldn't do anything about genocide in its backyard (Bosnia), but now seeing it take on the even more dangerous Internet Explorer renews my faith in the institution.
Question: If IE is such a monopoly and if bundling IE discourages competition and innovation, then why are Firefox and Safari thriving on the desktop, and why is mobile Safari (iphone) providing far more mobile internet surfing than IE's mobile edition? Also, why is Google--a major competitor of Microsoft's and potentially a lethal one--jumping into the fray with Chrome?
This EU action is ridiculous. This is what happens when you hire too many stuffed shirts into government...they start looking for things to keep them busy and justify their paychecks, and they quickly come up with meddling, costly, cumbersome, burdensome, destructive ideas like this.
God, I hate big government

[Sparc]

Apple must be quaking in their boots. After all, they ship OSX with Safari.

[TxTom]

I've been testing Win7 for a few days now and have not used IE past the point of downloading Firefox for the OS testing. It's been very nice (for a beta) and definitely quicker on its feet than Vista. And I've had absolutely no attempts by the OS to force me to use IE over Firefox. There was no way and IS no way that Vista will ever be on a machine on my network, but Win7 is looking pretty good thus far.
That being said, Apple ships with Safari and Mail uses the WebKit engine as well. The help program is webkit. How is this any different at this point from what MS has been doing in the past couple years?
Perhaps Opera should be suing Apple, Ubuntu, RedHat, SuSE and everyone else who simply does not consider Opera mainstream enough to be loaded out of the box. This is sarcasm, of course. Since anyone who is likely to have use for a a browser will also have internet access, it's a simple matter of using the included brower and heading over to the provider of their choice and downloading their favorite browser.
E.U. must really stand for Enormously Uninformed.

[srviratamw]

But there is still the issue of updates that does force you to use (and keep) IE on your Windows machine. They of course could make the update process not use any browser like OS X, or make it work on any browser (I'd say W3C-compliant but with IE that would be silly).

[context]

srviratamw said:

But there is still the issue of updates that does force you to use (and keep) IE on your Windows machine.

And that is an issue for government? The appalling tyranny of having to keep Internet Explorer on the hard drive. We live in dangerous times.

[iimacboy90]

This is absolutely disgusting. I don't like Microsoft, I don't like Windows, and I don't like IE, but I fully believe Microsoft has the right to install any software they want on Windows and build IE any way they want to. I don't see anyone complaining that Linux comes bundled with Firefox, or as Sparc mentioned above, Mac OS X comes with Safari. But of course Opera has the least amount of market share and they're the ones screaming the loudest. The EU has too much power and not enough to do (I think the Bosnia example mentioned above fits perfectly here).

[Wondercow]

I was fully onboard with the previous EU decisions, but this one is far-fetched. I agree that most people use IE since it's already there, but imagine an OS that didn't ship with a browser preloaded.

[Rhywun]

I agree with everyone else--this is utterly ridiculous, and furthermore it's nothing more than rent-seeking on the part of Opera. Pathetic.

[Ilgaz]

As Apple mentioned and while I am not a big fan of Safari...
1- Apple is not a convicted monopolist
2- Safari/Webkit and OS X itself is a great example how to provide a browser with operating system and yet let users choose what to use, without ANY side effects.
3- You can, actually remove Safari (while it is pointless).
4- Webkit, the framework is open source, open to EVERY third party including Adobe, Google and it must be way easy to ship for ANY OS including Apple's competitors. Since when we are hand compiling MSHTML?
If there was enough authory to cope with MS, there are ways to remove mshtml from windows and yet have still functioning system (including third parties). As nobody touches them, they won't bother.
People, especially on Macworld (Mac users) doesn't really understand the situation on Windows. When you buy Windows or Windows installed machine... When you click "Start Menu", it says "Internet:Internet Explorer"
It is a miracle and thanks to thousands of developers work, millions of self assigned promoters that Firefox got 20% share today. Absolutely miracle under such conditions.

[TxTom]

"it says "Internet:Internet Explorer""
Yep, it sure does--that is until I downloaded Firefox and when asked, made it the default browser. Same with Thunderbird. After install, it asked if I wanted TBird for email and I said 'yes' and now for email, there's the blue TBird.
Every machine on my network has this config...and IE is left on the machine because of Windows Update-no other reason. It is totally possible to run a windows shop and keep IE use to a minimum. We haven't had a virus intrusion in years here.
Is IE deep rooted in Windows? Yes. Is it possible to have Windows Update run without it? No. Not the way MS has built WU with it's ActiveX dependencies. If you want to really go after the last nail they're hanging their hat on for the need for IE on windows...there it is. With OS 9 and forward Apple's Software Update was browser-less. Why not MS? They're claiming that IE is necessary. If you want to argue the point that they're using it as a crutch...go after WU.

[MorrisTheCat]

>In any case Microsoft should be forced to separate IE from Windows. “I would like Microsoft to remove their browser from Windows,” von Tetzchner said.
That has to be one of the most absurd statements I've ever heard. If Microsoft didn't include IE, then they wouldn't be obliged to include ANY browser in Windows. With no browser bundled with it, how exactly would a user download any other browser?? You need to get online somehow. Or, are PC users supposed to go back to the stone age days of getting browsers on a CD mailed to them?
I'm really curious to know how they think such a scenario would work?
And honestly, is it any surprise that Opera, with the lowest of all market-share is the one that is pushing the hardest behind the EU on this?

[Frost7]

k2director said:

Thank goodness we have the benevolent EU to protect us from this dangerous world we live in, filled with bundled browsers and all. Really, I was a little skeptical of the EU's relevance when it couldn't do anything about genocide in its backyard (Bosnia), but now seeing it take on the even more dangerous Internet Explorer renews my faith in the institution.

Question: If IE is such a monopoly and if bundling IE discourages competition and innovation, then why are Firefox and Safari thriving on the desktop, and why is mobile Safari (iphone) providing far more mobile internet surfing than IE's mobile edition? Also, why is Google--a major competitor of Microsoft's and potentially a lethal one--jumping into the fray with Chrome?

This EU action is ridiculous. This is what happens when you hire too many stuffed shirts into government...they start looking for things to keep them busy and justify their paychecks, and they quickly come up with meddling, costly, cumbersome, burdensome, destructive ideas like this.

God, I hate big government

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