Beyond Binary

European Union regulators said Wednesday that Microsoft can go ahead and start using its latest proposed "ballot screen," which will let new users of Windows choose which browser--or browsers--they wish to use.

The decision to let Microsoft "market test" the latest version would seem to mark the wrapping up of the latest antitrust skirmish with Brussels.

More than a decade after Microsoft first started including a browser with Windows, regulators said earlier this year that they had reached the preliminary view that such an inclusion violated European antitrust law.

In response, Microsoft initially said it would ship Windows 7 in Europe without a browser at all, seemingly challenging the logic of the decision by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU. However, amid indications that such a move would not fly, Microsoft in July offered a proposal that more closely matched what regulators and competitors wanted--a ballot screen that lets users choose which browser or browsers they wish to install.

Since then Microsoft, regulators, and competitors have been going back and forth about how that screen would look and operate.

"The improvements that Microsoft has made to its proposal since July would ensure that consumers could make a free and fully informed choice of web browser," Europe's antitrust authority said in a statement. Among the changes since Microsoft's July proposal is the agreement by Microsoft to add more information before users select a browser. Microsoft will now first present users with a screen explaining what a browser is and will then offer "Tell me more" buttons for each browser.

Under the revised proposal, Microsoft would, through Windows Update, make available for five years in the European Economic Area a screen allowing users of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 to choose which Web browsers they want to install. PC makers will also be able to install competing Web browsers and, if they choose, set those as the default browser and disable Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

"The Commission's preliminary view is that Microsoft's commitments would address these competition concerns and is market testing Microsoft's proposal in light of these requirements," The EC said in its statement.

For its part, Microsoft said it welcomed the European Commission's decision.

"For Microsoft, today's decision is a significant step toward closing a decade-long chapter of competition law concerns in Europe," general counsel Brad Smith said in a statement.

Update: Smith also spoke to CNET about the deal and its potential impact on others in the industry. Click here to read that interview.

Microsoft on Thursday lashed out against Google Chrome Frame--an Internet Explorer plug-in that supplants IE's rendering engine with Google's.

The software maker, in a statement, said users are better off moving to a later version of Internet Explorer if they want the latest technology as opposed to using Chrome Frame.

Google plans to use Chrome Frame to, among other things, allow people to run Google Wave from within Internet Explorer.

(Credit: Google)

"With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers," Microsoft said. "Given the security issues with plug-ins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plug-in has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take."

However, some took Microsoft to task for criticizing plug-ins, noting that Redmond itself has more than a few.

"Microsoft scared of security of plug-ins. Uninstall Silverlight now," Mozilla's Dion Almaer wrote in a Twitter posting.

Google announced Chrome Frame on Tuesday, saying it can be used with Internet Explorer 6, IE7, or IE8 to use Chrome to render Web pages and execute their JavaScript programs. To work, users have to install the plug-in and Web developers must insert a line of code onto their Web sites that engages Chrome Frame when a person visits the site.

Update, 12:35 p.m. PT: I had a chance to chat with Amy Barzdukas, general manager for IE.

In addition to reiterating the security risks associated with running what she called "a browser within a browser," Barzdukas said that using Chrome Frame also interferes with the private-browsing and clear-browser-history features within Internet Explorer 8.

"That is not made clear," Barzdukas said. "That is a trade-off that customers would really want to make with eyes wide open."

Barzdukas also rejected the notion that it offers a good option for those still using Internet Explorer 6.

"If you are a user of IE6, you should get off IE6, not install another add-on," she said. "It just compounds your problem."

Update 3:20 p.m. PT: Google offered up a statement on its own, explaining its thinking behind Chrome Frame.

"Google Chrome Frame is an open source plug-in that is currently in an early developer release and was designed with security in mind from the beginning," Google said. "While we encourage users to use a more modern and standards compliant browser such as Firefox, Safari, Opera or Google Chrome rather than a plug-in, for those who don't, Google Chrome Frame is designed to provide better performance, strong security features, and more choice to both developers and users, across all versions of Internet Explorer."

Although it does increase the surface area, Google notes it brings some security features of its own, particularly for those running IE6. "Accessing sites using Google Chrome Frame brings Google Chrome's security features to Internet Explorer users, providing strong phishing and malware protection (absent in IE6), robust sandboxing technology, and defenses from emerging online threats that are available in days rather than months," Google said.

Microsoft on Monday said it is looking into a report of a flaw in some versions of its Internet Information Services product that could allow an attacker to gain control of a system.

In a statement, a Microsoft representative said the company "is investigating new public claims of a possible vulnerability in IIS 5 and IIS 6 File Transfer Protocol (FTP)."

Microsoft said it is not aware of any attacks using the vulnerability. "We will take steps to determine how customers can protect themselves, should we confirm the vulnerability."

According to IDG News Service, code for exploiting the unpatched flaw was posted to the Milw0rm Web site. IDG said the exploit appears to affect primarily older versions of IIS--and only when the FTP function is enabled.

Once it is done with its investigation, Microsoft said, it will decide how to address the matter, which could include a security update as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday or an out-of-cycle update.

In a posting on Monday, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) suggested IT administrators "disable anonymous write access to the FTP server to help mitigate the vulnerability" but added that "a proper impact analysis should be performed prior to taking defensive measures."

Artists put the finishing touches on a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge constructed from soup cans. The June stunt was aimed at drawing awareness to Microsoft's Browser for the Better campaign, in which the software maker is donating to a food bank for each download of Internet Explorer 8.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is extending a promotion that is designed to spur downloads of Internet Explorer 8 with the promise of donating food to the hungry.

The "Browser for the Better" effort kicked off in June. Under the plan, Microsoft was donating $1.15 in food for each download completed through the program's Web site, up to a maximum of $1 million.

The program was slated to end early this month. However, Microsoft never took the site down and announced formally last week that it is extending the promotion through the end of September.

Microsoft declined to say how many downloads the promotion has received, but the site's Web site reflects the updated deadline and still says that Microsoft will donate a maximum of $1 million.

Besides extending the deadline, the software maker is making one other change to the program--doubling the donation per download (to $2.30) for those who are moving from IE 6. Microsoft has said it would like to persuade more users to move off IE 6, but must nonetheless support those who choose to remain with the years-old browser.

According to Net Applications, IE 6 has 27 percent of the global browser market, as compared with 23 percent for IE 7 and more than 12 percent for IE 8. Various versions of Firefox account for 22 percent of the market, while Apple's Safari holds 4 percent market share.

The Browser for the Better push is just one of many ways that Microsoft is promoting IE 8, including a promotion with Nickleback as well as the boring-but-effective methods of pushing it out through Microsoft's automatic updating mechanisms.

Firefox launched the latest update to its browser, Firefox 3.5, in June.

It's been roughly eight years since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6, but in many ways the company is still very much tied to the aging product.

Although Microsoft has released two major versions of Internet Explorer in the past couple of years, for many, the face of Internet Explorer is still IE 6 in all its tabless glory.

In large part, that's because many of Internet Explorer's users are the ones who tend not to change the browser that comes with their operating system--either because that's the type of consumer they are, or because they are working on a work machine in which they are not able to upgrade to a later version of IE or switch to another browser.

Amy Barzdukas, the general manager for Internet Explorer, said in an interview this week that Microsoft's perception is "being built by a browser that was fine technology eight years ago or a decade ago."

But that's frustrating, particularly since Microsoft has invested a fair amount of effort in the last couple of years trying to rebuild IE after letting it languish for several years. Microsoft added things like tabbed browsing and a phishing filter back with Internet Explorer 7, which debuted in October 2006, and earlier this year launched Internet Explorer 8, with anti-malware features as well as a private browsing option and improved standards support.

Even with that work, though, IE 6 remains not only the most widely thought of version of Internet Explorer, but also the most widely used version of the browser, at least by a narrow margin. According to Net Applications, IE 6 accounts for 27 percent of the browser market, compared to 23 percent for IE 7. Microsoft's new IE 8 has more than 12 percent of the market, while Firefox 3.0--the most widely used version of that product--has 16 percent (See chart below).

(Credit: Net Applications)

Overall, Microsoft has been losing ground for several years to Firefox and other browsers. After reaching near ubiquity in the post-Netscape era, IE's global market share is now less than 70 percent. However, Barzdukas is hopeful that the trend is starting to shift with the release of IE 8.

"To the extent that IE was losing share over the winter, any rate of loss has substantially slowed since we came out with IE 8, and in some geographies IE overall has actually gained significant share," Barzdukas said.

One of the biggest things that could help Microsoft, Barzdukas said, is if more people understood that there were better browser options available from Microsoft. She has taken part of that task upon herself, making a pest of herself when she is at friends' houses for dinner--checking to see what version of the browser they are using.

A growing chorus of Internet users have asked Microsoft why, if it really wants people to move to IE 7 or IE 8, it doesn't just end support for IE 6. After all, there have been plenty of calls for the death of IE 6, particularly from Web developers, who are weary of the work required to make their sites work in multiple versions of Internet Explorer, as well as Safari, Firefox, and other browsers.

In a reversal on Friday, Microsoft said it is now open to allowing users in Europe to select competing browsers in Windows 7.

Essentially, Microsoft is offering to put into Windows a way for consumers to easily install a rival to Internet Explorer. PC makers, as they can today, could still install a rival browser and could also disable Internet Explorer, if they choose.

"Under our new proposal, among other things, European consumers who buy a new Windows PC with Internet Explorer set as their default browser would be shown a 'ballot screen' from which they could, if they wished, easily install competing browsers from the Web," Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said in a statement.

As first reported by CNET News earlier this month, Microsoft had hoped to comply with Europe's objections to the inclusion of a browser in Windows simply by removing the browser entirely from Windows 7. However, the European Union indicated that such a move might not satisfy its concerns.

Addressing Google's Chrome OS, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Tuesday that the move leaves its rival with dual operating systems, something that Microsoft learned the hard way is not a good idea.

"I don't know if they can't make up their mind or what the problem is over there," Ballmer said in an onstage question-and-answer session following his speech at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. "The last time I checked you don't need two client operating systems."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer addresses a question about Google's Chrome OS during an onstage talk with Fortune's Geoff Colvin.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ina Fried/CNET)

Microsoft, he noted, had separate business and consumer operating systems back in the days of Windows 95 and Windows NT. "It's good to have one."

He also noted, as Stephen Elop did in an interview with CNET News last week, that Microsoft really doesn't know what Chrome OS will look like.

"Who knows what this thing is?" Ballmer said during the talk, which was broadcast over the Web. "To me the Chrome OS thing is highly interesting--it won't happen for a year and a half and they already announced an operating system (Android)."

He rejected the idea that Microsoft needed to mimic Google's approach.

"We don't need a new operating system," Ballmer said. "What we do need to do is to continue to evolve Windows, Windows Applications, IE (Internet Explorer), the way IE works in totality with Windows, and how we build applications like Office... and we need to make sure we can bring our customers and partners with us."

Ballmer said that research data shows that at least 50 percent of the time people are using their PC they are doing something that is not in the browser. "Windows is the operating system for the job."

On the advertising front, Ballmer said Microsoft will continue its advertising that targets Apple. "We're going to continue to tell the story of the PC."

Microsoft has had "preliminary talks" with European Union officials with the hopes of settling several regulatory probes, according to a Bloomberg report.

According to the report, Microsoft is aiming to settle the matters before EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes steps down at the end of the year. One issue is the EU's well-publicized concern over the bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows, while the other pertains to Office software, Bloomberg said.

The EU earlier this year issued a preliminary finding that the inclusion of a browser in the operating system violated European antitrust law and has been exploring a variety of potential remedies, including forcing Microsoft to distribute rival browsers with its operating system.

Last month, CNET News reported that Microsoft was planning to ship Windows 7 in Europe only in versions that had the browser feature removed, aiming to sidestep regulatory action. However, both the EU and rivals issued concern over that approach.

As for the Office inquiry, Microsoft has said it was opened in January 2008 and resulted from complaints filed by a trade association of Microsoft's competitors.

An EU spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report of settlement talks and a Microsoft representative declined to comment. Both Microsoft and an EU spokesman declined to comment in the Bloomberg report.

Many people think that the browser is starting to replace the operating system as the center of the personal computer.

Naturally, the view that Windows is on a path to irrelevance is not one generally espoused by Microsoft. That said, at least some inside Redmond's walls argue that the Web browser needs to start acting more like an operating system.

Helen Wang

(Credit: Microsoft)

"Some of today's browser policies are not very safe," says Microsoft researcher Helen Wang.

Wang, who has been at Microsoft since getting her doctorate from University of California at Berkeley in 2001, argues that the Web browser should act as more than just a file clerk that rubber-stamps each request that comes its way. Rather, it should act more like a traffic cop, keeping things moving smoothly and ensuring that the computer's resources are fairly allocated.

In short, Wang says, the browser needs to act more like Windows does--making sure that different Web applications are protected from one another--even those running within the same site. So Wang and her team came up with a prototype, called Gazelle, that does just that.

Microsoft first outlined Gazelle earlier this year, but has only recently started to detail its thinking. Wang plans to present a paper on Gazelle at the Usenix security conference next month, and last week Microsoft posted an article on its Web site explaining more about Gazelle.

Wang isn't trying to suggest Windows is going away. Indeed, she says, Gazelle depends on Windows, acting merely as the middleman for Web pages seeking to access a computer's resources.

"We're really trying to leverage the decades of operating system experience and apply that in the Web and browser setting," Wang said.

Microsoft is also trying to be clear that Gazelle is not the immediate replacement for Internet Explorer, which has been losing share to rivals, including Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari. The company has yet to commit to commercializing Gazelle in any way, meaning it remains just one of scores of projects incubating inside the company's research labs.

Many outside Redmond, though, see the browser finally starting to take on the preeminence that many had assumed it might back in the early days of Netscape. Google's decision to offer Chrome, some think, was more about having an engine for running its Web applications than it was offering an alternative means for serving up traditional Web pages.

Modern browsers, Wang said, have taken a step in the right direction by isolating different browser tabs so that if one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn't get taken with it. Wang said that Chrome and Microsoft's IE 8 take steps toward increasing the reliability of Web browsing, but she argues far more drastic steps are needed.

"I think Gazelle marks a significant departure from all previous browsers, including Chrome and IE 8," Wang said.

For now, Gazelle is very much a prototype. It borrows much of its actual rendering technology from Internet Explorer itself. And although it can display 19 of Alexa's top 20 Web sites, there are still plenty of things it can't do. It also runs more slowly than Internet Explorer, particularly when opening new Web sites.

But Wang said it offers Microsoft--and the industry--a road map for how the Browser should evolve.

"I think this is the right way to go and I think this can be practical," Wang said. "It will also take a lot of work."