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Microsoft Settles with EU - No to Fines, Yes to Browser Ballots!

Posted by Daniel Shain

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Microsoft and the EU have settled on terms regarding the antitrust issues inherent in Microsoft's browser practices. Microsoft will now offer a non-partisan ballot of browser options for new and existing users of its Windows operating system, and in return, the EU promises not to fine the living daylights out of the company. Everybody wins!

If anyone is wondering whether the browser ballot idea sounds familiar, it does. It was back in July that Microsoft accepted this solution to the lawsuit leveled against it by Opera (and later joined by Mozilla, Google and others) that its bundling of Internet Explorer with every version of Windows was unfair and stifling to competition.

There were some initial hang-ups over the structure of the ballot. According to the EU, MS and they had quibbled over whether the ballot should appear in an IE tab and whether MS should get to set the order that the choices appeared. In the end MS lost the argument - the ballot gets a dedicated window(pdf) and the browsers are displayed in random order, ostensibly removing bias. Earlier speculation that logos were going to be removed due to the iconic nature of IE's blue "E", which we thought was dubious from the start, seems to have been ignored.

IE will still be pre-installed on all computers, but this system will enable users to easily choose among other leading browsers to use instead if they choose. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera will be prominently displayed, with seven others - AOL, Maxthon, K-Meleon, Flock, Avant Browser, Sleipnir and Slim Browser - visible only if the user deigns to scroll to the right. Given that the first 5 browsers account for roughly 99% of all browser market share in the EU, that seems fair to us - many of the latter seven browsers we hadn't even heard of before.

Much of the further reading we've done has suggested that this is an indication of the EUs growing power globally, as well as acknowledgment of the seriousness of their billion dollar fines (despite paying off AMD, Intel could still be hit with a big EU fine as well).

According the the EU, "greater competition between web browsers... should lead to more innovation." Sounds good to us. The ballot law will go into effect in March, with all new and old copies of Windows 7 getting the ballot from then on. Further, all existing Vista and XP machines will receive the ballot within the next 5 months. The ballot will come in the form of an automatic software update, which will be available for 5 years, and every six months the choices available will change based on market research.

How much do you think this will shake things up? A lot of people are downplaying expectations, based largely around this argument: Savvy users who want to switch already have, and non savvy users, by and large, are just going to stick with IE. This might have a fringe effect then, but isn't a blockbuster move. What do you think?

Read more: NYT, Arstechnica, EU.
Reactions: Opera, Google, Microsoft.

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  • By: Alein.jane Jul 31, 2010 3:27 AM

    The ballot will come in the form of an automatic software update, which will be available for 5 years, and every six months the choices available will change based on market research.

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