Multiple Browser Bundling With Windows Is Stupid

A recent article published at the Wall Street Journal suggests that EU officials are considering forcing Microsoft to include a bunch of web browsers into the operating system to dilute the advantage that Internet Explorer has so far. This could mean forcing Microsoft to add web browsers to the installation of the operating system or to offer the user a choice during installation to download and install another web browser.

[Mu5afir]

Apparently people who are "stupid" don't want any choices when it comes to the browser they are going to use.

[njr]

On every clean install of XP I install firefox, doesn't make a difference to me. I either use IE once or never if I saved the install.

[The Lazy One]

for the same reason mcdonalds doesn't sell whoppers.

[somekindofmike]

it's stupid because...

why stop with browsers, what about media players... I want to see itunes, winamp and every other media player preinstalled on a new PC /sarcasm

[Arnon]

Why would Microsoft pack products in their OS that are not made by Microsoft. That's why they give you IE. So you can go and DOWNLOAD them yourself.

[edgeofblade]

It's stupid because these other companies come in and whine and complain their way into a market instead of doing the hard work. Microsoft has every right to include their own browser with their own operating system. I doesn't matter care how buggy it is... that's called a free market.

[Silver360]

The manufacturer can include whatever they want to. Shoot I don't need to see 10 different isp's when installing.

[player911]

I disagree with including extra browsers. I mean Microsoft is simply including a complete package. When you buy anything, you don't want to get home and open the box and find you need to buy a power adapter to charge the battery, or a controller to play with, or an engine to drive.

When I buy a product, I want a fully functional product out of the box. In terms of Windows, I mean Browser, media player, word editor, movie player, etc.

I think that the best solution would create a Core version. A version that is a stripped down version which could be distributed to those who don't want typical full blown windows. Maybe like "Windows: Lite".

Although I feel this could only become a marketing ploy to charge you extra for a normal version.

With Internet Explorer, true it may not be my first choice... but the benefit of installing Firefox is that if one fails to a virus, the other one can bail the other out. I've used firefox to bail out IE and vice versa. Plus some websites require IE.

I dunno. Gimme Gimme Gimme is all the corporations think about. Dipping their greedy monkey paws in other peoples pockets. Why does a government have any say so in a company's direction anyway?

[Kakkoii]

It's stupid because other operating systems aren't forced to do this.

[PotNoodle]

Other operating systems don't have 90% of the market share either.

[sakuragi]

And other operating systems don't have the worst browser preinstalled with the system either. This is actually doing the consumers a big favour.

[Mike134nl]

the judge should just say that they are free to develop their own OS to ship with their browsers.

[The Lazy One]

Apple has 100% marketshare of the OSes on macs, and restrict you to apple certified hardware to include in the computers.

Apple is way worse when it comes to locking out competition on their platforms.

[PotNoodle]

But in the world of personal computing, windows computers are still taking up 90% of the market.

[Kakkoii]

It shouldn't matter how much of a market share they have. What, if Apple suddenly had 90% would they be forced to include something other than iTunes and Safari? And be forced to allow OEM to install OS X on non Mac computers?

This article sums up how you guys seem to be thinking:
http://n4g.com/industrynews...

[edgeofblade]

So, deathrow wants to punish companies for being successful. That's a GREAAAAAAAAT economic theory. I'm sure people will be clamoring to make the next big thing after that.

If they have 90% of the marketshare, that's because people saw fit to buy their products. So, maybe we should be punishing the customers that made them so successful. How dare they...

[Marty8370]

Nothing wrong with having a choice of browsers, rather than having crappy IE forced on ya.

[DevastationEve]

i don't know where the crappy stigma came from, but you DO know that ie 7 and 8 use what's called protected mode to keep malware and viruses quarantined in a virtualized folder, right? it's actually the most secure browser out there, so of course you're letting go of some javascript performance as it loads pages. but i'd rather have a secure browsing session than not.

[Obama]

I use IE to download firefox anyways.

[heyheyhey]

ha!

they should "downloading Google Chrome" into the pie chart thar...

used to be a Mozilla fanboy.. now it's Google Chrome all the way baby!

[DevastationEve]

opera is actually the best. firefox is buggy, and google chrome is good but not great.

ie 8 is pretty good too, and so is the new ie mobile that ships with window mobile 6.5, but opera wins them all. mobile, desktop, they even have an opera mini that accelerates pages on your mobile phone.

edit:

i don't know where the crappy stigma came from, but you DO know that ie 7 and 8 use what's called protected mode to keep malware and viruses quarantined to a virtualized folder, right? it's actually the most secure browser out there, so of course you're letting go of some javascript performance as it loads pages. but i'd rather have a secure browsing session (when needed) than not.

[heyheyhey]

Opera is ok

Google has the fastest Javascript performance though.. and has all sorts of cool features like the incognito/porn mode and dragging a tab into a seperate window

IE is the worst.. i don't see how you can deny that, it's so slow and crashes a lot, lacks features too...

[gunnar2906]

@ApocalyPS3

What is the basis for your opinions?
Funny - but I as a WEB programmer simply hate IE!! I have to waste a lot of my time trying to get over its bugs. Microsoft has never followed W3 regulations, never meet its demands and, what the worst is, has never even tried it! IE 6 didn't support the most of W3 while Mozilla did. IE7 just a buggy piece of sh*t! iE 8 just a lil better, but also didnt support all regulations.
Microsoft's IE is now the main reason that doesnt let web technologies to develop. In my work i simply have to use only 10% of things that modern web-programming offers because 90% of them are not compatible with ie8.

[Kakkoii]

Firefox on the performance level is better than Opera. And I don't know where this idea of it being buggy comes from. Not to mention the plethora of add-ons for it. So many I couldn't live without.

[uie4rhig]

i'll have you know that Skyfire is THE best mobile browser

[Arnon]

I could care less about that stuff. Mozilla used to be amazing but they kept adding on to it and now it's fat and clunky. I like Google Chrome the most, but..

The best browser I have ever used was Opera. That thing is so hard to crash. And when you're downloading a file, it stores it in it's own cache file. So if it DOES crash, it backs up the data that was currently downloaded in the cache, and begins the download from where it left off. That's a big feature for me. Because the internet is so unstable.

[uie4rhig]

besides, every browser has the potential of doing so, simply because there are internet download managers..

and yes i have tried opera.. you say that firefox has been added on and whatnot.. what do you think of opera? they have tooo many features if you ask me.. many of which many people don't use.. with firefox they added lots of greate and useful stuff.. and next to that you can still extend it using addons (if i recall correct, opera doesn't have addons).. i'd rather have firefox over opera.. however, i got a copy installed anyway to make sure that my web sites work in every browser.. yes i do love chrome much better.. simple and will support addons shortly, but i don't like google having all my history with them..

also.. i can't remember last time firefox crashed.. nor chrome, nor IE.. if you know how to use it and know what you're doing.. it won't crash on you.. end of..

edit: i forgot to mention, i do use IE, not as intensively tho, i mainly use it for web development (compatibility) and some limited stuff that is not possible on Firefox!

[DevastationEve]

skyfire is good since it loads flash, and i like to visit kongregate a lot and play some kongai (hails yeah). but i prefer opera mini since it leaves out the flash. if i'm going to view flash i'll use opera mobile. if i need fast page viewing and better scrolling, i'll use opera mini. but skyfire's good too.

edit @ arnon

that's why i like opera too, it can keep partial downloads in the event of a crash. it also has a torrent client builtin, and several themes that look awesome. plus there's the speed dial page, something safari recently ripped off. safari's nice but it's too apple themed.

...man, even limewire has a builtin browser now! i just keep it simple:

opera > ie 8 > firefox > safari > google chrome > ie 7

[Kakkoii]

@Arnon, the only real noticeable change to Firefox has been the new location bar. Which can be changed back using:

https://addons.mozilla.org/...

[ZeroX9876]

microsoft is creating is Own OS and other web browsers want to force their way in, that's kinda weird. I'm using google chrome and firefox all the time, but having only IE for basic web browser isn't really a problem to most users.

On Mac OSX, If I remember correctly, there's no other web browser than safari. If you want another one, you still need to search for it.

if you build your own PC, you should have minimal knowledge in softwares available for windows.

Company like Dell, HP, Alienware, etc. could easily put other browsers on the first boot of their PCs (and Recovery Disc). That would be a nice option.

[mrv321]

It's stupid because with the other browsers installed will there also be a no need to have I.E

And don't click disagree it's just my experience. Sure I.E ran fine but now it takes 10 seconds to open a new tab, which believe it or not is a pain.

Well Linux is 'bundled' with firefox. I fear that Microsofts dominance doesn't come from have a great O.S it comes from the fact the it's what everyone is used to. No one wants a O.S they are not used to, as more and more companies use Linux instead of Vista then we'll see a change.

[Captain Tuttle]

That if MS was a European company the EU wouldn't have a problem with MS including Explorer and only Explorer on their OS.

[SpoonyRedMage]

But it's MS' product. They're not preventing you from using other browsers. I'm using Firefox right now but I have no issue with IE being on Windows.

Why should they be forced to advertise and Distribute competitors products in their products.

That's ridiculious.

[mrv321]

Well one of the Microsoft updates apparently slowed down firefox so I guess you could say Microsoft are limiting other explorers.

But that's just an apparently, and am not too sure on it hopefully some can confirm it.

[Traveler]

I agree, SpoonyRedMage. What the EU is considering is completely wrong.

[Marty8370]

Secure my arse.

[BIGELLOW]

This ruling has nothing to do with the fact that Microsoft has lots of money, has a large swatch of customers, etc, etc, etc... It boils down to one thing. When the PC market was booming and Microsoft was becoming the de facto standard for PCs, people became concerned about the future. If government operations, multiple corporations which represent whole markets, and consumers are faced with buying computers which a majority of the software works on, or buying computers that a minority of the software works on... what will happen if Microsoft simply decides not to create Windows anymore?

Sure, many would say "Microsoft would never do this." However, there is no law to prevent this. Unless, of course, it is determined that too much of the world relies on Microsoft's products for day-to-day survival. By declaring this, Microsoft was (in several courts of law in several countries) determined to be a monopoly. A monopoly isn't merely a company that has became large. A monopoly isn't merely a company whose products most people choose. A monopoly is when there is a greater benefit for people to "go with the flow" and choose the company's products that the majority of the world has consequently gone with. i.e., if Visa card was accepted everywhere and MasterCard were only accepted in a few places... people would choose Visa when faced with a choice... not because Visa is necessarily "better" or has more "features"... but because they will have better luck having a Visa card in terms of acceptance. Likewise, since more people would have Visa cards, more merchants would choose to accept Visa instead of MasterCard, in order to go with the majority. This vicious cycle would create a monopoly and give Visa too much power in the market.

Since this isn't the case... and there are at least two strong players in the market (MasterCard and Visa), there is no "monopoly" declaration... but the two would most certainly be prevented from merging, even though there ARE other options... those options just aren't wide-spread enough.

So, just because Apple makes a great OS... just because Apple's OS is viable, and lots of software is available for it... this isn't enough to consider Apple to having an OS that is comparable to Windows in market-share. As a result, Apple can "get away with" things that Microsoft cannot. Microsoft was legally declared a monopoly and, as a result, has a different set of rules that they must play by. One of those rules which was set a long time ago was that they were not allowed to use their operating system to their advantage, to push a different product onto the consumer and squash competition in this manner.

Microsoft did this with Internet Explorer and, as a result of breaking this rule, they were taken to court. The ruling is only one that Microsoft needs to follow, due to their status, not Apple. It may sound "stupid"... but the purpose behind it is simple... to prevent one company from becoming so influential that no "ma and pa" operation could ever feasible compete with it. One day, two brothers working from their garage may very well create the next Google killer and may even be able to succeed. However, no group is ever going to be able to create a new web browser (no matter how great it is) if the majority operating system continues to push a "default web browser" on individuals.

Keep in mind that this is not meant to protect the computer geeks of the world. Computer geeks already know WHAT a web browser is... that there are DIFFERENT web browsers... how to FIND these web browsers... and how to INSTALL and USE these alternative web browsers. The computer geeks are in the minority. The majority of "computer users" are those who think "The Internet" is "that little blue 'e' on the desktop." They think that installing and using Firefox, Safari, or Chrome is something that only advanced computer hacker types do because they like playing with computers and making them do scary things... they think that using that blue "e" icon (Internet Explorer) is the "real" way you're "supposed" to use The Internet.

It is this way of thinking that is dangerous, and allows Microsoft to crush the competition by continuing to make the typical computer user think that by using anything that isn't default and isn't Microsoft is doing something rather questionable, that you will regret later.

Likewise, I believe the same thing is happening with Google. Many people don't think about what a "search engine" is. They just think that Google is the way you are supposed to find information on the Internet... that all of these other sites like Live and Ask are just "other companies trying to trick them into an alternative way to use the Internet." The difference is, however, that using a different search engine is not disruptive. You can switch as easily as changing a bookmark, typing in a new address, etc... Switching an operating system, however, involves tossing out your old software... re-purchasing your software... finding out that some software is no longer supported in the new operating system... etc... and often involves investments of $20... $100... or $300.

As long as Microsoft continues to have this monopoly, they will continue to have to play by a different set of rules to continue to allow innovation and competition to thrive in the computer market. Sure, Microsoft innovates... and provides lots of things we should be grateful for. However, there needs to be some viable incentive that the Joe Schmoes of the world could feasibly create something innovative and not worry that they will be instantly obliterated once Microsoft steals the idea and makes it a free and default feature in the next automatic Windows update.

[jib]

too long

[LinuxGuru]

No, that was a very well-written comment and deserves bubbles ++

[Traveler]

@ BIGLLOW

Your description of what constitutes a monopoly is erroneous. I find your argument in general to be completely unconvincing.

Here is a much better take on the issue:
http://bradley.chattablogs....

March 25, 2004
Microsoft Is NOT A Monopoly
Anthony Bradley

The European Commsion’s $603 million fine levied on Microsoft reveals a severe lack of understanding of how cheaper products are offered to consumers. Microsoft is not a monopoly in any sense of the word. They do have a large market share but that’s not their fault. It's actually ours. No one in the world is forcing us to buy Microsoft software nor is Microsoft the only option available. The problem is that Microsoft offers, in some cases, the most software for the cheapest price. This is what we want. And this is why we buy it. We have made Microsoft successful.

What many anti-Microsoft companies reveal is their inability to compete with the talented people at Micorsoft thinking of creative ways to get consumers the most software for the cheapest price. So the companies unable to compete seek to use government, here and in Europe, to bully Microsoft into being less competitive.

If European companies could develop better products then this would not be an issue. Since they cannot, they are making an emotional appeal to the demon of monopoly. In order for Microsoft to actually be a monopoly it must have “exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action” (taken from Webster’s Dictionary). Microsoft has none of this. As long as consumers have other software choices then Microsoft is not a monopoly. Windows, for example, is not the only software available for consumers in the world. However, Windows is the most software one can get for the least amount of money (and I’m grateful). Microsoft has saved people like me a lot of money.

A New York Times article notes that "the ruling demand’s that Microsoft share more technical information with competitors in the server market, like Sun Microsystems, I.B.M. and others, is intended to ensure that Microsoft does not unfairly extend its monopoly beyond the desktop to the server market. The United States settlement also required that Microsoft share some technical information, but the European order requires that more information be shared.”

This is ridiculous. Could you image the government demanding that Kentucky Fried Chicken share its “eleven herbs and spices” with Church’s Chicken? Microsoft also includes other software with the packages that it offers. This bundling is seen as decreasing bundling options for other companies but, in the end, there is still choice. One can choose to bundle with a company like Real Networks but many companies do not. Is Pepsi complaining to the government because Coke is bundled to McDonalds? No, because Pepsi is bundled to Burger King. There are still choices and options.

If you want to see an example of a REAL monopoly try to start a business delivering mail. You will be thrown in jail because the government wants no competition and apparently other software companies don’t either.

If you don’t like Microsoft then buy software from another company. The choice is yours.

[mrlakadaddy]

you made me comment for the first time in many months...that was a very intelligent and well thought out post, something very refreshing on this site. people need to understand monopoly before they can say much...bubbles to you friend...bubbles. that was an excellent post b

[somekindofmike]

Quality Post,

Kudus & Lots of Bubbles +++

I have a better understanding of what they mean by monopoly, still doesnt' mean I want a new copy of windows to come bundled with every web browser on the planet! But at least i've got a better understanding of why.

[JeepGamer]

And you can be sure Microsoft would monkey up Firefox every which way they could since they're already installing add-ons for it that you have to use the Registry Editor to get rid of.

I'm sure the fact that the Uninstall option being greyed out is just a "mistake" and that Microsoft would never intentionally make it a pain in the rear for you to remove an add on on to Firefox that makes it less secure.

[aGameDeveloper]

While I don't use IE unless I have to, I see not allowing it to be uninstalled to be a good thing. How is the operating system supposed to be updated - by trusting some random 3rd party browser to manage the network communication securely? By implementing some OS code that replicates much of the functionality of a web browser just for the OS update task? Oh, wait...

Imagine all the support headaches from the less technically literate if IE could be uninstalled. "My Windows Update is no longer working", "I don't seem to have a way to install FireFox", "My kid set up my computer and accidentally deleted Internet Explorer", etc.