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Opera Mini browser getting ready for Verizon--sort of
December 6, 2007
Opera, based in Norway, announced Thursday that it had filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission, alleging that Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by bundling IE with the Windows operating system. Bundling IE with Windows means people have no choice in receiving it and only afterward have the option of deleting it or using an alternative product as the default browser, Opera said.
Opera also claimed that Microsoft is hindering interoperability by not following accepted open Web standards.
Microsoft struck back Friday, indicating that it would not willingly unbundle IE from Windows.
"We believe the inclusion of the (IE) browser into the operating system benefits consumers, and that consumers and PC manufacturers are already free to choose to use any browsers they wish," a Microsoft representative said. "Internet Explorer has been an integral part of the Windows operating system for over a decade and supports a wide range of Web standards."
The Microsoft representative added that "computer users have complete freedom of choice to use and set as default any browser they wish, including Opera, and PC manufacturers can also preinstall any browser as the default on any Windows machine they sell."
Opera filed the complaint against Microsoft this week, asserting that Microsoft has locked consumers into using IE, which has "only recently begun to offer some of the innovative features that other browsers have offered for years," such as tabbed browsing.
"We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them," said Jon von Tetzchner, chief executive officer of Opera. "In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation."
Opera asked the European Commission to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows and to carry alternative browsers preinstalled on the desktop. Opera also asked the EC to require Microsoft to follow "fundamental and open Web standards accepted by Web-authoring communities."
The browser company asserts that Microsoft's "unilateral control over standards in some markets has created a de facto standard that is more costly to support, harder to maintain, and technologically inferior and that can even expose users to security risks."
Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.
See more CNET content tagged:
Opera Software, antitrust, Microsoft Internet Explorer, PC company, Web browser







What I don't like is that IE is so integrated into windows and applications that I can't get rid of it when I do download another browser I'd rather use. Then it's just taking up space and bloating up my computer.
Opera may not win the case but they still have a point.
I would say that adding up things that are IE only..... it only takes up about the same amount of space as Firefox, a grand total of 20-40MB's all total.
As far as integration, if I, for whatever reason, feel that IE is inferior, and wish to remove it, and its vulnerabilities, I can't. If Microsoft would just resurrect File Manager, and take that functionality out of IE, no one could make any complaints.
through the "commercial" and "legal" tactics of MSFT.
Don't get me wrong. I fully understand the complaint. I understand having to deal with someone in an OS that I do not want in there (heh, demo progs in newly purchased computers is another example) but if it is so big of a deal that one must complain so much to file a disbute over it I think that person (or group) needs to just get another OS. Microsoft is not forcing anyone to install or use their OS. You are free to install any OS on your system that you want.
It's called the aftermarket for a reason. Opera would have better luck spending their money in putting out a better product that people want to use and advertise it accordingly. Sueing for money because of their failure to do this isn't responsible.
law. Being one is not against the law but abusing it by adopting
keeping or slowing competitors innovations is illegal. It is
complex and hard to prove but MSFT has always used one tactic
that works, It drags the courts though years and stacks of
paperwork but fights the battle in the marketplace instead. Look
at Netscape. MSFT lost right? IT is the only convicted corporate
felon that I know, yet unlike individuals it appears to be going
about enjoying all the benefits of its illegal acts against Netscape
and hence the consumer.
I have Apple and Sun computers but as a Radio Ham the type of software I use is not available for these systems, if it were I would be happy to bid farewell to Microsoft. Must do is the master!
At least read the details of the complaint before making an ass of yourself.
That is and remains Opera's complaint. They want a better IE. Why do all the Microsoft shills and Firefox fanbois have to take a public cr*p whenever Opera is mentioned?
Opera's actions are an act of desperation by a company with a near-zero market share. I suppose next, Opera will sue Mozilla-Firefox for the crime of having a more popular browser.
And of course, frequently programs just ignore the default browser settings and load IE anyway. Not to mention it's constantly running in the background, meaning that you're open to all the usual security holes in IE whenever you're running Windows, period.
THAT'S what the complaint is about; that Microsoft forces people to use IE (because, make no mistake, if you're running Windows, you're using IE, though you may not be aware of it), yet refuses to follow the web standards like everyone else does, leading to web fragmentation. Quite frankly, I'm surprised it took this long for SOMEONE to complain about it...
And that you can install Firefox is irrelevant to the fact that Microsoft has abused its market power to prevent competition. To this day, there are MANY sites that require MSIE. That you can install Firefox doesn't mean that it will magically work on all these sites.
Opera also has a huge foothold in the mobile browser market, a market which is expected to overtake the PC market by 2009-2010.
Opera would be happy enough if IE was standard compliant (and IE 8 apparently willl be as far as CSS is concerned anyway).
Mozilla/Firefox IS standards compliant and do not have an effective monopoly on desktops so Opera would not complain about them.
And THEY ARE NOT SUING MICROSOFT, they are complaining to a legal body.
"Can you uninstall Safari from the new Leopard OS?"
Yes, but it's a little complicated for those who are used to the
way winblows works:
Step 1: Drag the Safari.app from your Applications folder to the
trash.
Step 2 (optional): Empty trash.
This is why M$ should be broken up and forced into extinction.
People expect such simple concepts as "uninstall" to be next to
impossible without either a degree in computers or an
"uninstall" program. Forget the fact that winblows is a plague
and a junkware OS that's good for nothing except playing video
games.
With OS X, you can remove the application shortcut, but you will still have the system library files that you cannot delete.. without corrupting the OS.
If you want a better example of things you don't have a choice of with Apple, try installing Quicktime on your PC. You automatically get iTunes installed (no choice) and two applications are running at that point too- iTunesHelper and iPodService. You didn't ask for those two to be run- and if you don't have an iPod, that's really offensive.
That sort of bundling is invasive and inexcusable.
Here's an analogy. You wake up on morning and Exxon has bought up 98% of the gas stations. They install special pumps that only work with Miatas. You can buy an adapter for your car but it costs $200 and stops working when Exxon installs new pumps. Exxon only sells them to people it likes. Your only effective choice is to buy a Miata or else stick to the small portion of the highway where there are friendly gas stations. Non-Exxon gas stations can not compete because Exxon will not allow then to fuel the Miatas that everyone else is using. There is nothing inherently superior about the Exxon fuel pumps. In fact, random spark occationally cause the Miatas to blow up.
You may not agree with that analogy, but I think it at least explains the perspective of the people you are arguing against.
...could it be that the OS literally didn't work after they ripped out every .dll file associated w/ WMP (including more than a few core system components)? Nah... it must've been because the mases loved WMP so!
Or maybe you should just try selling that 'popularity' line to folks who don't know any better...
[i]"Opera, Google, and the other companies out there complaining out there, if your product is better than MS, then Market your product."[/i]
Netscape did, and look where it got them. The US Department of Justice agreed w/ Netscape's assertions of MSFT crippling things to rub them out as well.
Nice argument on your part, until the fact that MSFT is a convicted monopolist who was found guilty specifically due to their behavior with web browsers...
The real funny part is, in order to get to an alternate browser and download it, you have to use IE on a default Windows install.
[i]"People don't want a barebone OS"[/i]
So instead they have to set aside roughly 7-10 gigabytes just to get all of Vista installed? A little extreme, dontcha think?
By the by, MSFT is using the exact same arguments they used back when they were charged with monopolistic behavior in the US. It wasn't much of a defense back then, and it's not that much better now.
/P
The problem is most users just use what is put in front of them, I see many people think the answer is "well your free to go get a different browser" unfortunately 98% of users have no idea how to do this and just because 100% of the readers of cnet news do doesn't make what microsoft does right.
Personally I've been using linux for 3 years and will never go back, the freedom and integration is very balanced because if it becomes unbalanced I just pick another distro, load up the programs I like and continue... It is the way it should be.
tim
Apple does not target Windows (although they started to port some code over). Nokia/Symbian/etc do not target Windows. GNOME/KDE/etc do not target Windows. Opera does not need to target Windows. If they have any issues, then it's up to them to read how-tos on programming.
If they want Opera pre-installed, then they have to convince the OEMs to include it. It's the OEMs who make the final decision now; Intel and MS are restricted from enforcing any exclusivity clauses over OEMs.
Opera: hire better software developers before you start suing the company whose offering you wish to exploit for greedy purposes.
This is a little off-topic, but what I am trying to say is that a "Free" (or Open Source) product is not always the best.
Microsoft has, from day one, flooded the web with it's own, Windows-specific mechanisms, in an Internet that is founded on the idea of open communication protocols. From perverting standard Java, to non-standard scripts and HTML, to such abominations as Active-X. Next up we have the proprietary "Moonlight" crap.
Open standards will win out in the end, just as the Internet won out over <shudder> MSN, or whatever that MS system was. In the meantime, MS is dragging it's feet and gumming up the works for everyone else.
They can include whatever browser they want, as far as I care. I just wish that their default browser would follow the web standards so that we don't have millions of web services that can only talk to Microsoft computers.
XML-based Web Services: by far and wide, their offering is the most consistent. It's not their fault if Java-based or Flash-based server packages do not support the web services standards as aggressively.
issue, and I wish Apple, Opera, and Mozilla would get together
and address the real issue of locking people into proprietary MS
crap instead of open Web standards. There are increasing
numbers of applications for the Web and Enterprise that use MS
server software that actively blocks access by anything other
than the latest versions of Windows Internet Explorer. iSite
enterprise is software used by doctors to access radiology
reports over the web, but it blocks access to anything other than
the latest versions of Windows IE. It won't even allow Internet
Explorer for Mac to work. The same applies to many programs
that serve medical records over the web. This forces people to
purchase Windows Vista to access these applications. This is a
clear violation of antitrust principles of leveraging their OS
monopoly to force out competitors in other markets.
more secure. If Windows became more secure, more malware
authors might start working harder on breaking into other
operating systems. No thanks, I like things just as they are.
Let them keep picking off the low hanging fruit.
We design a killer look and feel for a website. We program the website in clean code that's by the w3c standards, our css is clean and to spec.
We start debugging process in multiple browsers Firefox for Mac and Wintel, the same with Opera and Safari, all these web browsers display the code almost identically. Then the challenge... IE6 destroys the code and specially written css hacks are needed to allow IE6 to display the site correctly, thinking thats the end of the nightmare, IE7 uses a different rendering engine than IE6 and there for IE7 doesn't display the clean code properly either, but the css hacks for IE6 don't work in IE7 either. So now additional css hacks for IE7 are needed.
Microsoft should either do one of two things. Make their browser render code to actually approved standards so we programmers can write code once and have it look the same across all browsers and platforms, or even better STOP producing browsers. Microsoft is the nightmare browser for programmers.
Here's a kicker: the IE HTML Rendering Engine functions differently for end-users depending on their platform. IE 5.x on Windows had different tweaks than IE 5.5 on Macs. IE6 and IE7 also render things differently as upgrades often do. What looked sexy in Netscape 4.x doesn't look sexy in Firefox because both the standards and their interpretations have changed.
At the lowest level, the OS interprets things differently. A submit button renders differently between Windows and Mac. On a Mac, it does not have the highest z-index; on Windows, it has a higher z-index than overlayed browser code (hence some IE6 hacks). Blame the browser, or the OS?
That you can install Firefox is irrelevant to the fact that Microsoft has abused its market power to prevent competition. To this day, there are MANY sites that require MSIE. That you can install Firefox doesn't mean that it will magically work on all these sites.
Opera's complaint would be valid if Microsoft didn't allow people to install Opera on Windows or wouldn't let people make it their default browser. Compare this to iPhone, where you can't install any other browser.
Any decent OS comes with a browser preinstalled. Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, iPhone, Windows Mobile, even Wii. Removing the borwser might be in best interest of Opera, but it won't be in best interest of the consumers.
The worst part is that the EU regulators might actually force MS to remove IE. I am glad I don't live there.
Apple does not have a market position like Microsoft does, so the comparison is completely bogus.
How do people normally download their "favorite" browser on a brand new computer?
They start Internet Explorer, go to Mozilla.com or Opera.com and download it.
If IE goes missing, how will people download Opera? They will have to get it on a CD or something... back to the stone ages!
Seriously, though, "yes" would be the answer to your last question. It's a conspiracy, I tell you, to have us get off the computer and actually interact with the world to obtain whatever it is we want from the Information Superhighway.
I don't have a problem with them shipping it or making it the default browser. I think they earned that right through their market dominance, and good for them.
But in a world without any IE at all, maybe all that time people spent working on Microsoft-specific solutions could be used to develop better platform-independent protocols. Then maybe the web wouldn't be so fractured.
* OEMs start pre-loading their wares with Firefox or Opera. 99.99% of your silly question gets solved right there.
* FTP to releases.mozilla.org/pub and grab Firefox there.
* Go to friend's house, burn copy of Firefox, go home, install from burned copy.
(are all MSFT shills that desperate, or is it just you?)
/P
Before you know it, Firefox will come whining, then Netscape, then Apple and so on, and before you know it, there will be 15 Browsers preinstalled on a new computer that you buy. If Opera wins, how will the courts deny other browser companies, however small they may be.
and then this whole cycle will repeat with media player, desktop search engine, email client, antivirus, firewall, backup utility etc etc etc.
One day you will launch calculator and your computer will ask you which one you want: Microsoft calculator, Google calculator or Mozilla calculator.
I just hope that doesn't happen.
The point here is, have you ever attempted to order a Windows-based computer that doesn't have IE installed by default? If you go to a chain store, they'll refuse. It's against the Windows license to install another browser as default, just like it's against the Windows license to offer a dual boot option or to sell computers with no OS.
- can someone please explain me?
- by cary1 December 14, 2007 10:20 AM PST
- Opera is free, Firefox is free, even Internet explorer is free... so why are they fighting?
- Like this Reply to this comment
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-
- Again the Problem is
- by tashman December 14, 2007 10:27 AM PST
- That only one browser comes with windows for free and that is IE. If you want the others you must know what to do and go find it yourself. That would be like the church giving out the free food from a producer they like but refuse to give out free food from a producer of food they don't, then running commercials tauting how great the first producer of food is and how much marketshare they have because of their superior product.
- Like this View all 3 replies
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (239 Comments)One free product is competing with another free product and people are calling it anti-competitive.
So one day, a church decides to give free food to the homeless, will another church call it anti-competitive?
tim