European Union settles lawsuit with Microsoft
 

Internet and Technology

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After more than 10 years and 1.7 Billion Dollars in fines the European Union has settled with Microsoft on an anti-trust law suit.  There are no pending suits at this time.

The European Union contended that Microsoft took unfair advantage by shipping Internet Explorer with its operating systems.  The case rested on IE being somehow entangled with the operating system and since it was shipped with every PC, this was deemed unfair.

The other less popular browsers were Firefox, Google's Chrome, Safari and Opera.  The settlement dictates that a PC out of the box will offer the buyer a choice of 12 browsers at first startup.  The names of the browsers will be rotated so that no one of them always maintains the first slot.

A similar suit was brought in the United States, but was dropped some years ago.

The settlement further states that if Microsoft does not adhere to the agreement, then they can be fined up to 10% of their revenue.

What is this all about?

The original suit was brought because it was thought that IE took unfair advantage of being coupled with the Windows Operating system.  They likened it to going to the supermarket and seeing only one shampoo on the shelf and having to ask to see what others were available behind the counter.

Microsoft countered with the argument that they shipped the operating system and the browser together to allow the end user to come up on the Internet in a seamless way.  They felt it would be like shipping a car without a steering wheel and expecting the buyer to shop for one that fits.

The new EU based regulations will not apply out of the their jurisdiction.

According to Saugeen/Kincardine Times statistics which agree very well with industry stats, IE has a strong rival in Firefox.  It is well to note that Firefox is free.  All you have to do is download it.

Internet Explorer has about 82% of the market.  Since Windows has approximately 93.4% of the operating system market, it shows that rival browsers on Windows do get selected after initial installation.

Browser Percentages?

As can be seen from the table Opera which is made in Norway and initiated the EU suit, has only one tenth of one percent of the viewers of the Saugeen/Kincardine Times and CCNews. 

Since all browsers have to adhere to the Hypertext Mark UP Language Specs (HTML) and other standards like XML, there can be little differences between the browsers on a functional basis.  There is, however, a big difference between their look and feel.

So is the decision important?

Although Google Chrome has a tiny 2% of the market, they are going to build a whole suite of Interent based products on top of Chrome that will pull applications off the PC platform that Microsoft dominates world-wide. 

This is not lost on Microsoft and they, no doubt, are building all internet based applications like MS Word and Excel to rival and check powerful Google.

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Saturday, December 19, 2009