Opera files EU antitrust suit against Microsoft for bundling IE

Oh man, here we go again. Opera just filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in Redmond's least favorite place to litigate, the EU. The suit claims that Microsoft is stifling competition by distributing Internet Explorer in its Windows OS. The Norwegian company, backed by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), a long-time opponent of Microsoft, is asking the EU Commission to force Microsoft to comply with industry standards for web browsers and either unbundle IE from the OS or include other browsers along side IE. That would be the Opera Browser we presume, eh Opera (wink, wink). Unlike Apple, Nokia/Symbian, and others who also bundle a browser with their OS, Opera argues that web designers build their sites with IE in mind due to its dominant position in the marketplace and non-compliance with industry standards for web browsing. As such, other browsers won't render some pages correctly -- a disincentive for users to browse with anything other than Microsoft's IE. Sit tight kids, this ride will be bumpy.

Update: Here's Opera's press release on the matter.

[BigDaddyM @ Dec 13th 2007 6:48AM]

If you can't sue them here, sue them there.
M

[Andrew @ Dec 13th 2007 7:32AM]

Actually, they could probably sue them in the US - but being a European company it's easier doing it at home...

[Kurian @ Dec 13th 2007 8:03AM]

They claim that IE doesn't follow the standards and web designers design for IE.

Well with my knowledge of web designing, I know that IE follows the standards perfectly well and goes out of its way to correctly and intelligently render improperly coded web pages that DONT follow the standards.

Firefox and Opera rigidly follows the rules with no slack and any slight screw up on the page will break the site.

They should be suing web designers for designing crappy pages that dont work in their browser, and Microsoft should be awarded for their intelligent error correcting browser.

[Azayzel @ Dec 13th 2007 8:10AM]

Hmm let's see, buy an OS with a FREE Internet browser or buy one without a browser and spend MORE money on some jinky browser nobody uses? It's a rhetorical question.

Judges need to start putting the smack-down on frivolous lawsuits so companies stop filing them. If it's something legit go with it, otherwise revers the charges and teach them!

[Kamokazi @ Dec 13th 2007 8:41AM]

@Kurian

Go here:

http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html

Look at it with IE, FF, and Opera. Notice which one passes, which one fails somewhat, and which one fails miserably. Then try and tell us IE adheres to web standards.

[Dale @ Dec 13th 2007 8:42AM]

Kurlan, I'm sorry, but you're talking out of your bottom. By standards, they mean the World Wide Web Consortium's standards - and Internet Explorer definitely does not adhere to them anywhere near as closely as other browsers. IE7 is a step forward in some ways (and a step back in others, try left floating a UL for example), but it's still miles behind Firefox.

It's never IE being wonderful and making something pretty out of bad code, it's always people having to code badly to get IE to render properly. An important distinction. Between some odd interpretations of CSS and the differences between JavaScript and JScript, IE adds work to a developer's day.

I'm not an anti-Microsoft type nor an IE basher (other than coding pages that it *and* Gecko-based browser likes, I've never had a problem with it), but nor am I going to defend it so blindly.

[Kamokazi @ Dec 13th 2007 8:51AM]

@Azayzel

Opera is now completely free and no longer ad supported. (Also going by the test I just posted it adheres to web standards better than FF, and usually renders pages more quickly too...but since it is a browser not many use, no one caters to it like they do IE and FF.) I suppose if you want to be overly critical, you could give it crap for not being open source.

[sma @ Dec 13th 2007 10:13AM]

@Kurian

I think your wrong in your statement, unless your talking about IE7. I mainly use Firefox to check the web pages I make, but I also use IE6 to check pages before I upload. Usually I end up having to change something in the code to make sure it also works with IE. Sometimes because I forgot a close td, my problem not IE's, but firefox displayed the page propperly and IE had no clue what to do with it. Everything I've heard is that even with a propperly coded page as far as the w3c standards go, a page has to be changed to go against the w3c standards to work with IE6 and below.

[Student Driver @ Dec 13th 2007 10:26AM]

Up next: Sparco sues Ford, GM, and new owners of Chrysler for bundling seats; butts everywhere rejoice.

[AndrewN @ Dec 13th 2007 11:19AM]

I can't believe I'm reading that someone who claims to have web development experience is calling Internet Explorer, even 7, anything that resembles W3C standards compliant.

Whether or not you consider it to be Microsoft admitting that Internet Explorer is a piece of poo, there are a series of custom conditional statements you can place in the header of HTML to tell Internet Explorer and only Internet Explorer to load certain stylesheets, which normal browsers ignore as a comment. Basically, the significance of this is that you can make an entire separate set of stylesheets just for Internet Explorer to get your pages to load properly. That's an admission of guilt if you ask me.

[davekilljoy @ Dec 13th 2007 11:22AM]

@Kurian


Uhh if you really are a web dev, then I cant believe the words that you just typed. IE is the most broken POS that has ever graced the internet. I mean the simple fact that it doesnt support pseudo classes; namely :hover (among others, :first etc..) is a flippin joke. And another testament to its complete and utter junk is that fact that it's CSS parser will still read a statement if its got a "_" before it. Now I suppose you could say that this was clever foresight on M$'s part, because they knew how crumb the browser is and included it to help us poor web devs...but no I think it just proves how lazy/crappy the team who dev'ed it was...

Anywho, point is, I create w3c validated (XHTML 1.0 and CSS) web pages, and yet i still have to fuddle around with my code to get IE working properly.

[ScareyJ @ Dec 13th 2007 11:29AM]

They're sueing them through the EU because the EU has already demonstrated their willingness to depart from previous understandings that home countries usually implement remedies against anti-competitive behavior, when they levied the record breaking 1/2 billion dollar fine against Microsoft.

Not sure how they can even quantitfy tangible damages for a product thats a free download. I suspect however, like in cases where the EU unfairly promotes member corporations like Airbus against Boeing, General Electric, etc. that it won't matter -- the EU will rule in its typical fashion.

[Che @ Dec 13th 2007 11:58AM]

@ Azayzel,

I don't know if you're old enough to remember, but there was once a company called Netscape that sold what was, for the time, the best major browser on the market for about $20. Then Microsoft started to "give away" (i.e., include in the price of Windows) Internet Explorer. Netscape had to stop charging for its browser.

Because it couldn't bundle the price of development in with a product that almost everybody needed to buy, like MS could, Netscape lost its browser revenue stream and basically stopped developing significant improvements. IE became a better browser than Netscape's for a while.

Once it had near total dominance in the browser market, MS stopped making any significant improvements either. (How long was before the release of IE 7.0, was the last significant upgrade?) Opera was around and better than IE (had tabbed browsing, etc.) but its market share was tiny because it needed a way to get money from users - you could buy it or get the free ad-supported version, which most people found annoying. Most users didn't want to pay the price in dollars or in ads, so Opera was never a major player. It wasn't until Firefox came on the scene as a free and much better competitor to IE that MS started developing real improvements in its browser again.

I may have oversimplified a bit, but this could be a case study in the harms a monopoly can bring. MS used its monopoly power in the OS market to leverage itself to a dominant position in browsers and, while it made a good browser for a while, once it had dominance in the browser market, it absolutely ceased investment in making its products better. It was only once the open source Firefox managed to compete without significant revenues that MS started improving its products again. Moral: Competition good, monopoly bad.

BTW, is it too cynical to think that MS, once it had a dominant share of the browser market, had an incentive not to comply with standards so that sites that worked on IE wouldn't work on its competitors? Only if you think a monopolist doesn't understand the value of barriers to entry of new competitors.

[Joe @ Dec 13th 2007 12:35PM]

(Response to above.)

Netscape the best browser? In your dreams. It sucked. It constantly crashed for no reason, leaked memory and was slow. What did them in was that they then started charging for it. That went badly so they declared only corporate customers had to pay. (Yes, Netscape was originally free for everyone. They started charging for it AFTER IE came out. Netscape has been lying about this for years to play the victim.)

[Jonathan @ Dec 13th 2007 2:14PM]

@Joe

... And if it weren't for Netscape, we'd never have the Mozilla Foundation, and subsequently never have the REAL competitor to IE, AKA "Firefox".

(That means shut your yap; Netscape has more than made up for their past.)

[snitch @ Dec 18th 2007 2:14AM]

well i guess the point they are trying to get across is that people should be able to remove IE at any point if they dont feel comfortable with it, an at this point people still can't do it, you could disable part of the browser but you can't completly remove it from a windows machine, and guess what hackers are loving everything about it. The same way Mac users can remove IE from there macs or even safari there native browser windows users should have the same control over there machines, otherwise the next time IE launches by itself with spam while your using Mozilla or any other browser someones getting sue

[poly @ Dec 13th 2007 6:48AM]

no-one uses opera cos its crap, microsoft cant include every possible browser.

Don't get me wrong i think IE is crap, and use Firefox

[poly @ Dec 13th 2007 7:34AM]

how come im low ranked when i made the same comment as everyone else, that opera should stop whinning and create a decent rival for firefox.

IE is satisfactory as a default browser, i use it at work - it does its job, its just not as user friendly and customisable as firefox. to be honest i dont know much about opera but its not as good as firefox.

[Andrew @ Dec 13th 2007 7:38AM]

Not only is Opera faster than Firefox - but it doesn't use all of your RAM and crash! I use Firefox mostly, but Opera is the better technology. If only they would add extensions.

You admit to NOT knowing much about Opera - and still you claim that Firefox is better? Try it at least. It's where Firefox developers pick up ideas like mouse gestures etc.

[Andrew @ Dec 13th 2007 7:38AM]

Not only is Opera faster than Firefox - but it doesn't use all of your RAM and crash! I use Firefox mostly, but Opera is the better technology. If only they would add extensions.

You admit to NOT knowing much about Opera - and still you claim that Firefox is better? Try it at least. It's where Firefox developers pick up ideas like mouse gestures etc.

[PSM @ Dec 13th 2007 7:42AM]

I always assumed the reason few people used Opera was because until very recently you had to pay for it -- not the best way to get new users in a field where all the competition is free. I've tried it a couple times and couldn't get into it, but the idea of having to pay for it also made me less likely to try to overcome my initial discomfort with it.

[Kelmon @ Dec 13th 2007 7:47AM]

I think you are being ranked low because you missed the point. The point is that IE maintains its dominant position because web designers design their sites for it and because IE renders content differently to that of standards-based browsers those sites won't render correctly in other browsers without additional work (which they don't need to do because, hey, everyone uses IE, right?). The only option for Opera to compete (and anyone else for that matter) would be to render content incorrectly in the same way as IE, which is nuts. Opera is trying to resolve a Catch-22 situation.

Mind you, the only real solution to this problem is for IE to render content correctly or to go away entirely (and that last option is not going to happen). Unbundling IE from Windows or shipping other browsers with the OS won't help much since you'll still need to use IE to view sites correctly.

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 13th 2007 8:25AM]

@Andrew:

Actually, on XP, I've had IE crash on me before Firefox. I was using FF to browse the web while FTP'ing some 50,000 small (200-500 byte) files in IE (I figured I'd let it run in the background instead of downloading a dedicated FTP client... boy, I was wrong) IE took up my 1G of RAM and 1G of swap. and IE and MS Office crashed while Firefox and all my background applications were the only thing left running.

[poly @ Dec 13th 2007 8:40AM]

@Andrew i take your points, but its hardly Microsofts fault that most people use it and websites are built for it, in any industary a clear market leader is always going to have an adavantage and smaller parties have to work around that and focus on their strengths untill they get themselves into a permission where they can force the web designers hand.

I think firefox is far more stable these days and dies not crash very much at all.

[Jonathan @ Dec 13th 2007 12:04PM]

@Kelmon

Actually, Opera already goes very far in replicating the quirks of IE, so there isn't much left to your point.

Not very "nuts" now, is it?

[kL @ Dec 13th 2007 3:33PM]

Opera does go very far in replicating quirkiness, but they can't go 100% without becoming buggy unpredictable crap IE is.

And because it's still not 100%, still one can find site that doesn't work in Opera. Then, despite years and years of improving engine, implementing latest and greatest standards, spending millions on reverse-engineering IE bugs, reviewers in magazines end up saying "I've tried, it's fast and nice, but my blog didn't work, so it must be broken crap".

[Hotwings @ Dec 13th 2007 6:53AM]

Apple Safari = Good
Mozilla Firefox = Good
Opera = Good

IE 7 = Not so good.

[Sel @ Dec 13th 2007 11:13AM]

the only comment worth spit on this topic

[steveo @ Dec 13th 2007 12:14PM]

The integration between IE7 and MSO is awesome and is light years ahead of any 'comparable' solutions out there.

Sure, it is not 100% standards compliant - but that's what happens when you try and maintain support for every iteration of web coding conventions since 1989.

[AndrewN @ Dec 13th 2007 4:54PM]

Speaking of Safari, I've actually noticed a lot of similarities between the way Opera renders pages and the way Safari renders pages, which I find quite troubling. For one, Safari's rendering engine, WebCore is based on KHTML from KDE's Konqueror. Opera uses Presto. However, for whatever reason, usually glitches that I find in Safari also show up in Opera. For me this puts them into their own class, which I usually just ignore since so few of my company's website's viewers are using Opera, and even fewer using Safari. Really, this makes Firefox the de facto standard in that it's the the most important of the standards-compliant browsers. I would imagine that many other developers totally ignore Opera as well, focusing primarily on Firefox, and then wasting precious time whipping up a second set of stylesheets for IE. Maybe Opera is more standards compliant than Firefox, but if nobody uses it that doesn't really make it better than Firefox, it makes it worse.

[Ed @ Dec 13th 2007 4:56PM]

1998...

Netscape = Good
IE = Bad

But remember what happened there?

[hotwings1 @ Dec 14th 2007 8:07PM]

Sel > Do you mean worth spit as in worth as much as spit, or do you mean it as the only one worth anything.

[Drew Green @ Dec 13th 2007 6:55AM]

What a bunch of bull. Yes, IE is inferior to Firefox, Opera, and most other browsers, but that doesn't mean MS has to accommodate other companies. Why the hell should Microsoft have to bundle Opera in their own operating system? Why should they have to remove their own software from OS? As far as I'm concerned, MS developed Windows and have the right to include anything that they own (such as IE or WMP) in their OS. They also have the right to not include anything they don't want. When you buy Windows, you're buying a product MS designed, not a gateway to all software that's available. This is so petty of Opera. Maybe they should go out and write their own OS and then they can include Opera as the main browser.

[nosleepidiot @ Dec 13th 2007 7:09AM]

Ya...it seems that the Safari windows experiment failed.

Firefox rules....some of my web designers claim that they Firefox is even better than safari on the Mac....

[Dyst @ Dec 13th 2007 7:21AM]

I think this is a good thing, a wake up call for Microsoft, that they to have to follow the web standards, and not just promise that they will and not follow through.

This is a good thing for everyone, if there is no monopoly, then there is more competition and everyone have to follow by the rules. I'm sure web designers would love this. :)

[Andrew @ Dec 13th 2007 7:33AM]

Actually, since they were convicted of monopoly practices in the US they HAVE to accommodate other companies.

[Charles @ Dec 13th 2007 7:35AM]

"MS developed Windows and have the right to include anything that they own (such as IE or WMP)"

Actually they don't. Bundling software constitutes an abuse of their operating system monopoly which stifles innovation and destroys competition. Microsoft abused it's monopoly by bundling IE which effectively destroyed Netscape's business. Having taken over the browser market they used their position to push their web server and internet related development software. They then did it again with Windows Media Player which caused most users to stop using programs like Real Player which caused critical damage to their business. Having made Windows Media Player the default choice they used it to push their VC1 codec, which despite offering nothing over H.264 ended up in both the HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards generating royalties for Microsoft.

Microsoft is in a position to put any software developer out of business by abusing its operating system monopoly. For example if Microsoft bundled some high quality anti-virus software with Windows it would cause anti-virus software developers to lose most of their revenue and many would go out of business. That is why laws exist to prevent such monopoly abuse and why Microsoft should not be able to bundle software with Windows.

Sadly Microsoft has a propensity to ignore these laws and do as it pleases, which costs it a few hundred million here and there but in the long run benefits them greatly. The only solution to prevent Microsoft benefiting from further monopoly abuse is to split it into two companies, one developing the operating system and the other developing applications. That way the applications side would have to compete on an even field with other applications developers leading to greater competition and thus more rapid innovation. Unfortunately it's unlikely to happen.

[giuliop @ Dec 13th 2007 7:42AM]

You obviously know nothing about fair competition, antitrust laws and the problems they address, do you?

Ever wondered why IE, being inferior to Firefox and Opera - as you say - has had, and still has, a large percentage of the market, no matter what?
Ever wondered why competitors in the browser field were crushed and the few remaining ones had to resort to giving the software away to even be able to remain in that field, or are struggling to stay alive?

I suggest you do a little research and try to give an answer to your not-so-rhetorical questions, for ignorance is not a blessing; it's a vehicle to expressing stupidity.

[Kelmon @ Dec 13th 2007 8:01AM]

Essentially IE represents a barrier to the World Wide Web, which everyone I think can agree we should all have access to. Because much of the Web has been designed for IE and continues to be, but which renders content differently to that defined in web standards, the only way to access it is via IE and therefore this represents an abuse of monopolistic powers. Opera aren't, for example, going after Apple with Safari because someone using a Mac can expect to switch to Opera from Safari and not experience a deterioration in the way that content is rendered. By doing things differently IE is effectively handcuffing the Web to itself and therefore preventing competition.

[E71 @ Dec 13th 2007 8:06AM]

I agree. To hell with EU/Opera... Don't like Windows? Don't like how IE is bundled with Windows? Then STFU and use someone else's OS -- you are NOT forced to use Windows.

[Duscrom @ Dec 13th 2007 8:12AM]

It's only "not fair" cause it's microsoft. HOw about iTunes being bundled into Quicktime installs. Apple using their iPod monopoly to keep the music store locked. The fact that Safari, iPhoto, iMovie and such is already bundled with this Mac.

RealNetworks went out of buiesness because their program sucked. It was slow and buggy and full of Malware. And again, talk to apple about that buiesness decision, because Real was mostly known for streaming video. But Quicktime became the dominant format, and after that Flash based FLV.

As far as the browser space, a IE7 ain't that bad, and Firefox is gaining ALOT of momentum. And Opera has alot of ground to make since for most of it's life it cost money.

[philed @ Dec 13th 2007 8:13AM]

MS is the dominant player in PC software as its OS is installed on just about every machine leaving the factory and I applaud Opera (and the likes of Netscape before them) for standing up for their (and our) rights. As time goes on, MS adds new bits and pieces to its OS, pushing legitimate businesses out. Businesses that have filled gaps and, in the case of anti-virus manufacturers, protected MS's interests. Browsers, anti-virus, fire-walls etc creep into each new OS or service pack and one thing I certainly dont want is my range of choice degraded because another application becomes a new windows 'service'. I am all for MS making better products, but all they seem to do is get fat and slow and greedy.

Plus, as a developer, I would like to see IE toe the line as far as web standards are concerned, when hell freezes over right?

[Mark Richardson @ Dec 13th 2007 8:26AM]

@Charles
Actually they do. Its their product and they can do whatever they want with it.

Besides, if IE really sucked as bad as everyone says it does, people would be dumping it and finding a better browser. It must not be *that* bad since most users are accepting it. (I happen to despise it for its refusal to conform to standards, but that's only because I'm informed.)

The reason Firefox, Opera, etc aren't picking up is because they're *different* and that scares the average user. If people are still too ignorant to use Google to find another web browser, that's their problem.

What does Firefox get out of having more users, anyway? They don't advertise and their software is free.

[Drew Green @ Dec 13th 2007 8:45AM]

Actually, I do know the US antitrust laws. My mother is an attorney dealing with these matters. However, I don't agree with the current laws. I think that software bundles should not be grouped into the same rules that regulate other monopolistic practices. Microsoft is a monopoly, no doubt about that, but they should have the right to put anything they want into their OS. It's THEIR product. MS isn't preventing anyone from installing third party browsers, but why should they encourage it? Of course they want to make it as easy as possible to use their product (IE). There is no way in hell MS should ever HAVE to include third party software (such as Opera) into Windows.

Firefox, for example, is a terrific browser, much better than IE in my opinion. At first, Firefox started off as a browser that only advanced PC users were using. After a series of upgrades, but mainly by word of mouth, Firefox has turned into a widely used browser by geeks and newbies alike. If Opera is as good as the company that owns it thinks, then their browser will become a widely used product.

[netdroid9 @ Dec 13th 2007 9:12PM]

Well, I don't like it, but the way I see it is that IE is a part of the operating system (The actual IE application is (to my knowledge) simply a wrapper around the mshtml engine, used by a multitude of other Windows components such as Explorer, the help system and pretty much all the dialog boxes that pop up on first boot). Sure, it can be removed, but you can then say that Explorer has a monopoly on shells because most people use it instead of alternatives such as Desktop X, that the bootloader has a monopoly because most people use it instead of GRUB or LILO... You get the picture.

Fact is, a monopoly is defined as (and I quote): "Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service". Microsoft doesn't stop you using alternative software and never will. Wingeing to the courts because your product isn't as popular as the one supplied as an integral part of the operating system is a waste of time and money better spent advertising your product to the end user. I myself have never seen a single ad for Opera (note: I live in Australia, so I don't know if they do much advertising in Europe or the US), nor have I even seen anyone actually using it IRL.

[something @ Dec 13th 2007 8:49AM]

@Drew: Exactly right

What's next? Is Adobe going to sue Microsoft for bundling MS Paint? And why no suit against Apple for bundling Safari?

[Tyler @ Dec 13th 2007 10:32AM]

As the consumer, if given a free option that works just as well, 9 times out of 10 you're going to pick the free option, right?

That may put things like anti-virus software companies out of business, but web browsers? Since they're all free, nothing is to stop a consumer from switching back and forth between them. You don't like IE? That's great - Firefox and Opera are both free so go ahead.

The courts seem to think that we are all drones, just using whichever operating system is presented to us first.

[Student Driver @ Dec 13th 2007 10:41AM]

Way, way, way out of hand at this point. I wrote earlier "Sparco sues American automobile manufacturers over bundling seats." (well, paraphrase) to highlight how insane the concept of bundling has become. MS shouldn't be forced to ship with just a kernel, GUI, and boot manager just because others can provide things like text editors, media players, browsers, or whatever. To my knowledge, MS isn't actually hindering anybody from installing anything. So, if anybody really wants to bang the drum about monopoly abuse it's time to move to Apple and its iPhone (yes, I wrote it! haha!). Many Linux users stick with Firefox, so is that also "stifling innovation"? Should Apple stop "bundling" Safari?

Much like web development and catering to customers, you're not going to get very far if you invent your own electrical outlet interface if nobody can use it. These people want to get their information out there, whatever it is. Since most people are "listening" with IE then you might as well focus on that.

I remember using Opera and it couldn't even render CSS properly which was why I stuck with Phoenix, and later Firefox. So, should I continue to hold that against Opera? Maybe it's better, maybe it isn't, but a lot of time has passed since then. The same goes for Firefox. Oh, and could it be a plug-in that was crashing it more often? Try disabling a few (like the weather one that seems to freak out my Ubuntu install) and see what happens.

[Kelmon @ Dec 13th 2007 10:45AM]

@Duscrom

Again, people are missing the point of this. With respect to the comments that iTunes represents a monopoly by tying iTunes and the iPod together, that is pretty much correct and is already being investigated by the European Commission. However, with respect to other examples of bundled software on the Mac, such as Safari and iPhoto, you misunderstand the purpose of this case. I've said this a couple of times already so I'm going to try and keep it short (please look for my other comments of more):

IE is an abuse of monopoly power because it renders the web differently to that defined in standards so other browsers are not a replacement unless the sites visited have been written for IE and standards-compliant browsers. Because IE holds the lions share of the market many sites only work properly in IE and so Opera (and other browsers) are not used.

With respect to Safari and iPhoto, both applications can be easily replaced without preventing the user from either viewing web sites or managing their photo collection since neither users proprietary file formats.

[Phil Perman @ Dec 13th 2007 6:55AM]

But... but... without IE, how would you download Opera?


Yours sincerely
Faithful Opera user