Opera Software is going where many have gone before, and filing a complaint against Microsoft. In a nutshell, Opera is asking the European Commission to force Microsoft to take two actions:

1. Divorce Internet Explorer from Windows
2. Make sure Internet Explorer supports web standards

The first part makes sense. Microsoft has an unfair advantage in the web browser wars because it bundles Internet Explorer with its widely used Windows operating systems. This isn't the first time someone has cried monopoly and pushed for Microsoft to unbundle software from Windows. And in fact, the European Commission has already ordered Microsoft to offer versions of Windows without Windows Media Player.

Opera wants Microsoft to either unbundle IE and Windows or to bundle alternative web browsers as well as Internet Explorer.

As for the supporting standards bit, are you serious? Opera's argument is basically that Microsoft is breaking the web because many web developers design pages to render properly in IE without paying much attention to competing browsers like Firefox or Opera. But should the European Commission or any regulatory agency be issuing rulings about what version of CSS, XHTML, JavaScript and other software developers should be supporting?

[video via Opera Watch]