Filed under: Microsoft, Mozilla, Browsers
More ballot screen drama; now Mozilla's executives are up in arms
Microsoft's struggle with the European Commission's demands regarding browser choice just never seems to end. Today's soap opera episode introduces another main character into the cast: Mozilla. Earlier this week, Harvey Anderson and Mitchell Baker, two highers-up of Mozilla and the Mozilla Foundation, blogged about concerns and issues they had about the fairness of Microsoft's proposed ballot screen.
Mitchell's post outlined how Internet Explorer remained "uniquely privileged" within Windows (no big surprise there) while Harvey argues various points with the technicalities of the design and functionality of the ballot screen concept.
If Mozilla's suggestions are taken into account for the final release of the ballot screen, users may be provided with a more seamless experience at the ballot screen itself, allowing users to not just download their choice of browser immediately, but also immediately install the chosen browser and set it as the default, with minimal or no extra work required on the part of the user. It could also require that Microsoft prevent future Internet Explorer updates from asking to set IE as the default browser.
Mozilla CEO John Lilly explained that these recently expressed viewpoints on browser choice are a part of Mozilla's plan to "get across our point of view," as he puts it. Mozilla is expected to officially voice their concerns to the EC soon, as final word on the ballot screen is expected before the end of October.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ashish said 11:07AM on 8-20-2009
Make ur own OS, get a 90%+ market share and then start bitching. U are getting a free ride and now u want them to buy u a pizza too. Wow!
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wung said 11:43AM on 8-20-2009
agreed!
Gav said 11:58AM on 8-20-2009
This whole thing is SO ridiculous.
Microsoft shouldn't be forced to advertise it's competitors products on it's platform. Making them do it sets a dangerous precedent...
I don't see why Mozilla are complaining either, didn't they hit 1 Billion downloads the other day?
Most of my friends use Firefox or Chrome, and they're not technical in anyway, they do it out of choice. Firefox is public knowledge now to most people.
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rells009 said 12:18PM on 8-20-2009
This is just ridiculous. What more can you want?? You're getting free ad space.
Seriously, this is just more griping for the heck of it.
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Quikboy said 12:39PM on 8-20-2009
Not another whiner. Microsoft shouldn't have to do this in the first place, and now these other guys want MORE?
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johnbondjovi said 12:53PM on 8-20-2009
Microsoft was convicted for breaking not just EU but also US antitrust laws.
Now it is punishment time. It is not supposed to be fair. It is supposed to level the playing field for all companies that compete against or with MS on the Windows platform.
It is a win for all technology users even if some people don't understand what is going on. Search for competition law on Wikipedia if unsure.
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George said 10:23PM on 8-20-2009
Are you freaking kidding? NO governmental body here in the US or the EU, especially the freaking EU, have no business dictating how an operating system should be built. Period. I don't give a rats butt about how Microsoft operated fifteen years ago. The market is completely different now. This is just absurd. If MS has to do this, then every other OS developer should be forced to do this...to level the playing field as you put it. This is not a win for any except the whiny people running Opera and Mozilla. Opera is an insignificant browser that almost no one uses or even heard about. They should stick to cell phones and Nintendo products.
johnbondjovi said 6:49AM on 8-21-2009
"I don't give a rats butt about how Microsoft operated fifteen years ago."
Well the law does. If someone is convicted for murder 15 years after it happened no one says, ah screw it, it was a long time ago. That is what we are talking about, Microsoft was found GUILTY.
" If MS has to do this, then every other OS developer should be forced to do this...to level the playing field as you put it".
See this is where everyone misses the point. What other OS distributor has been found GUILTY of anti competitive behaviour?
Not regulating an abusive monopoly leads to disastrous consequences for all involved and not just Tech industries but all industries.
Don't you understand even the most basic aspects of antitrust abuse?
Antitrust laws are not fair, they are not supposed to be fair, they should not be fair, they are equalizing moves that are used to whack down the abuser.
"This is not a win for any except the whiny people running Opera and Mozilla."
This is a win for the web developers and by extension for the all the web users. If you don't understand this I can't help you but there a lot of people with strong opinions who seem to not understand the basic principles at play here.
[insert anything here] said 4:38PM on 8-20-2009
I don't really see an issue with these particular concerns. The less clicks, the better, it's a win for everyone. I personally would like a single control panel to set a default browser, without each asking or not asking every time. Don't ask, give me a single box with checkmarks for all of them. Though really, that probably won't get done, not at a first party (microsoft) level anyways.
And there are, already, utilities that do that. But they require a separate download and install.
Then again, I am not in EU
...then again.. I'm mostly using Linux now
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sitruc said 6:18PM on 8-20-2009
Don't all browsers ask about being the default during the install?
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chances said 8:28PM on 9-14-2009
"johnbondjovi said 12:53PM on 8-20-2009
It is a win for all technology users even if some people don't understand what is going on. Search for competition law on Wikipedia if unsure."
Plz spit that drivel out when the GoogleOS launches only with Chrome and no other browser. I bet no Apple fanbois come out because Apple only bundles Safari and no one says anything. They should have stuck with the plan and shipped Win7 with no browsers to the EU.
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johnbondjovi said 6:58AM on 8-21-2009
When Google and Apple are convicted for anticompetitive behaviour, for leveraging their dominance in one market(OS) to take over another(Netscape/Web) then "plz" whack them down too.
Nik said 3:14AM on 8-23-2009
to johnbondjovi:
It's interesting to see how one insists on holding certain principle and their derivatives so linearly true. Microsoft is breaking the *law*. Punish them. Apple is not breaking the *law* yet. No punishment for them. Yet. Google is not breaking the *law* yet. No punishment for them, either. Yet.
You seem to like to prescribe and only to prescribe solutions to remedy policies violated more than to look closer and stay with the problem at hand longer to see the whether greater good can be obtained than by issuing the traditional remedies given to these violations of rules, which are here with us in the first place to do good but are bound to be altered. Aren't you tired/sick of that?
Why do I say so? If 15 years ago Microsoft was guilty, why haven't they been punished? Perhaps there were holes in these regulations. Perhaps the government thought the tax was so good coming from Microsoft they can easily overlook the lawsuit. Microsoft was given when A then B, but they chose C which got them D instead. Perhaps the US regulation is not as strict as the EU. I think it's that simple. I think it's because there were the rules, there were the rule appliers, and there were very good arguers with Microsoft that show these policy followers, like you, don't make sense. And that was when someone who need to say, hold on a second, yes these are the laws written down but you are *obvioiusly* doing something far from good and are just as *obviously* as argued by your lawyer unpunishable, hence the laws must be rewritten for you and for the future. thank you very much. That should have been but it was not.
Now, like you, if every prosecutor seeks holes only when they are discovered, then *things* can be 'too late' or *things* can be just fine. But it's the 'can be too late' part that we should concern ourselves. Like you, many car makers make irresponsibly inefficient cars thinking that when the time comes we need to switch, we then will switch. How about an ancienter example? Some civilization in the Amazon actually chopped down all the trees in their country to make boats, and then ended up with no trees. Simple, isn't it? If I declare a move to make an OS tonight, and decided to throw in my own browser tonight and distributing it to Aunt Elyssa tomorrow when I see her, it does sound funny to come down to my apartment to warn me of monopoly behavior. I've got reasonably negligible potential. Apple doesn't have that. Google doesn't have that. We can't just wait to see it grow large enough to take action. You don't skip your yearly check up either, do you?
And recently AT&T rejected Skype's use of its cellular 3G network for calls because it has every right, it claims, to let its *competitor* to use its cellular network. They got their way. Microsoft now offers its competitor's browser on a du jour menu, that's more than generous. How large is large? Do you decide? Does EC decide? Oh, it's not who decide, it's how. Okay, sure, then. How? 65%? How about 64.999% Come on, just one thousandth of a % point, can you take Microsoft off the hook, please? How about 64.998%? It's practially the same as 64.999%. And so on.
Do you notice a lot of things we use our hard earn money to purchase today comes with very third grade components? Why aren't they one by one sued? Why aren't their mother companies forced to offer choice of their respective competitors' components? I think it's because whatever it is, it won't change that future that much that fast. Maybe in a thousand years' time you won't be wanting to use a 2009 abc component for the 3009 xyz. But you know as I do that you barely want to use, most of the time, 2000's product on your 2009 box. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down, this trend. It's the potential money in a pseudo-potential / kind-of established market of a confirmed realm of technologies (computers). Everyone can see this. And this is why it got US government's attention 15yrs ago. And this is why it got EC's attention a couple of years ago. But if it weren't for the potential it has to affect so much as oppose to made in China nail vs made in Mexico nail for the plumbing machine used predominantly in Alaska, then who cares? Google has potential, Apple has potential, Linux got potential, for the same kind of motivation, they should also then be examined. Not just when they or others have proved themselves to be the giant, then you go after them. That's shortsightedness, that's the policy-following brown noser, that's falsehood from incompleteness in thinking, Like
Yours.
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