Microsoft Windows browser ballot coming out in EU next week
Posted by Daniel Shain
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Windows users across select countries this week and soon all over the EU will be informed they have "an important choice to make" - and that's whether or not they want to keep using IE or not.
Perhaps it's not surprising to hear the words "Microsoft" and "anti-trust" in the same sentence, but it was only last year when Opera (and later others) began grumbling about how IE came packaged with every edition of Windows, and how it was just plumb unfair. You can imagine Microsoft's initial reaction, but when the EU got serious, they came up with the brilliant ballot idea. And it's just about ready to roll out.All Windows users currently using IE as their browser will see the image above pop up (assuming you download your Windows Updates), prompting them to seriously look at other browser choices. The order of the 5 browsers displayed, which are the top 5 by far in the EU, is randomized, as are the remaining choices off to the side.
Earlier I speculated that this might not have a huge effect, since most people who are savvy enough to know about FF and other browsers have already made their switch. But with the continued growth and mainstream adoption of alternate browsers, maybe there is truly a growing population of people who have heard about them but never really knew how to try them out themselves, and this ballot would be a godsend for them.
The ballot rolls out in the UK, Belgium and France this week, and the rest of the EU will get it March 1. MS claims that's ahead of schedule, but we're pretty sure we remember reading that it was always supposed to come in March 2010, so maybe they mean it's early in the sense that it's not late. In any case, it'll be interesting to see if there is a significant statistical shift in the coming months.
Via Microsoft Blog
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Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will begin offering a âWeb browser choice screenâ to Internet Explorer users in Europe, as required by the European Commission. Internal testing of the choice screen is underway now.
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