http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/ Engadget Comments for http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
I don't want to install vista, then windows 7, every-time. :( ]]>Jul 24th 2009 2:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/and how the hell can you have a monopoly over web browsers? Almost all of them are free!

I'm not to familiar with how MS was "forcing" users to use IE but it seems to me that having IE installed at first is a convenience.
If your to lazy to install a different browser that's your choice.

]]>Jul 24th 2009 2:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/The problem with that approach is if Mozilla (for example) changes the directory layout of their file server, it'll break the browser downloading feature, at least until the next update. Until that happens, clueless users will complain that "Microsoft's browser downloading feature is broken" and, given how thick-headed the European Commission seems to be, this will probably land MS in a lot of hot water, despite the fact that they are not at fault.]]>Jul 24th 2009 2:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
I got one How does one download said browser if they are getting a new computer and are setting up a new internet connection; to get online they need to setup the router and most likely will need a browser but if one its not installed how do you do that without an internet connection

(assuming that some providors don't install one at all, or they buy a new computer and then an upgrade or retail version of Windows)]]>Jul 24th 2009 2:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
You are absolutely right my friend. If your gonna twist Microsoft's nipples about this brower stuff there is no way you're going to get them to host other companies browsers on their servers]]>Jul 24th 2009 2:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/

The real question is, how long before opera whines because IE is at the top of the list and they're not.]]>Jul 24th 2009 3:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.opera.com/downloadlatest or http://easy.mozilla.org and immediately downloading the latest version.]]>Jul 24th 2009 3:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 3:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Whatever happens, it's a dumb ruling. Those who know about and want another browser will go ahead and get it. Those who don't will stick to whatever you give them. Might as well pack in FF and have EU destroy Mozilla. Or better still get those whiners Opera in there.]]>Jul 24th 2009 4:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
That's kind of what I was thinking. Or even if the other browser companies don't want to do this themselves, Microsoft could do it. Say the user chooses Opera, and Windows connects to something like www.microsoft.com/operalatest that in turn redirects the user to the latest file. This way, Microsoft can oversee that these links are always working and accurate, and when there is an update or change in their directories, Microsoft can change where the user is redirected accordingly.]]>Jul 24th 2009 5:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Internet Explorer gives the average user a fully-featured internet browser. Microsoft allows the user to use that browser to download a new browser if they wish, and make that the default browser. In no way does Internet Explorer try to uninstall the new browser. Providing an operating system without a pre-installed browser will severely hurt the average consumer in Europe who could decide to return their new Windows PC because "it doesn't have internet" and get a Mac instead.

Also, Microsoft also pre-installs Windows Media Player onto Windows, why don't they stir something up with that? Stupidity at its finest. If a commission wants to investigate a certain case, the investigators/lawmakers in charge of investigating better know what the fuck they're talking about.]]>Jul 24th 2009 5:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
And is making someone use IE8 for the whole 30 seconds it takes to type firefox.com (or whatever browser they want) and click download really that bad? They arent forcing it on anybody anymore than having it come with minesweeper and saying that it gives it a monopoly over other games.

What next say that it cant come with wallpapers pre installed because its taking away from other photographers who may be able to have their pictures as my background? Or it cant come with paint because adobe photoshop can do everything paint can do?]]>Jul 24th 2009 11:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
What makes you think that a web browser is required to download data? There are various data transfer protocols available so all Microsoft needs to do is point to download locations for the various alternative browsers and the other manufacturers simply need to provide Microsoft with the necessary information.

I don't think this is really going to work out but the sooner IE goes away the better everything will be.]]>Jul 25th 2009 6:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/i was agaisnt the inital bitching from everyone
hell if microsoft is making an operation system,
they should even be allowed to disallow all browser downloads,
let alone have an inital IE. but obviously microsoft wont do that.
but the browser's still great, and i wont mind going to opera.com using ie for 10 seconds.]]>Jul 25th 2009 2:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
As far as I'm concerned, the E.U. can eat s**t.]]>Jul 25th 2009 7:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Also, while OEMS are free to ship nag-ware garbage with their machines they were banned contractually from tampering with Microsoft's default settings for most of XP's lifespan. That meant OEMS could not install Firefox without adding it as some extra paid service like they did for media players.

I agree the EU misses the boat in these cases, but it's hard to identify "wrong" in software sales like it is in real space. There's lots of extra layers of license and marketing contracts that allow companies like Microsoft and Intel to keep moving the illegal demands between departments for years before the authorities can even collect proper complaints. The proper solution would be to treat Microsoft as a "utility". They should be disallowed from paying advertising "kickbacks" and disallowed from private OEM contracts. All OEMs should pay a published price per volume, right on the Microsoft Website for everybody to see. An OEM copy from places like Newegg is $99-$169 so EVERYBODY (Asus eee, Dell, HP,etc) should pay that amount with out any kind of contract allowed. The side effect would also be to limit Microsoft's ability to suddenly drop the prices for one customer attempting to try something new.

In other punishments I think Microsoft should be required to "cash out" 150% of it's liquid assets to stockholders...That would fix Microsoft's ability to "give away" things to hurt competition and force them to stick to markets they profit from and stop squashing profitable companies just so "the other guy" can' t make a profit because they might compete with Microsoft at some point in the future. it's really "stockholder" money and Microsoft is misusing it repeatedly...Look how often they're in courts for monopoly or unfair trade practice. Tell the stockholders to put the money in some other company and fix the REAL problem of monopoly capitalism, and create some new competition.

Realize too, that Microsoft's headquarters situated in Ireland really don't do the EU much good as it's a tax and legal haven but enjoys full run of the EU to gather it's bags of money. Companies like Mandriva or Opera (Suse used to be) are founded and headquartered in Europe, so it's in the EU's interest to promote it's own software industry (and jobs) so they don't have to worry about American government interests in their software. ]]>Jul 26th 2009 11:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
I'm sure someone who doesn't realise that the EU isn't a country has a full understanding of the situation.]]>Jul 27th 2009 5:45AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Gateway offered this "ballot style" choice to their customers with the Gateway.net service back in the late 90s. It presented IE, and Netscape Navigator as equal choices. This pissed Microsoft off to the point where they jacked up the Windows and Office license costs Gateway was paying to crazy high levels.

Equal choice, and MS threw a fit, one that helped add to the problems Gateway began having in the late 90s.]]>Jul 24th 2009 4:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 3:00PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Why would Mozilla change the download path, thus losing on of 300 million potential downloads? Use your brain.]]>Jul 24th 2009 4:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
The best thing to come of this is that it will allow MS to track how many non-IE browsers are requested for use on their OS, allowing them to guage whether or not they need to up marketing for IE.]]>Jul 25th 2009 2:09AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/As for folks who build their own and will be using OEM copies then I would guess they are tech savvy enough to have a copy of essential programs on a flash drive, or maybe PortableApps?]]>Jul 24th 2009 4:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 6:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Well what he says makes sense to me. Our ASP.NET developer for our intranet primaily uses FireFox for himself, but he would always have me check it in Opera since he knew it was fully standards complaint and occacionally have to find workarounds due to some non-standard stuff in FF (rare, but it happened), and then he would make exceptions for IE6/7 as always. (The only part that was actually necessary was IE7/6 compliance since that is what all our users use, and I am the ONLY Opera user...he is just a perfectionist :-)

When IE8 rolled out, we had 1 minor javascript issue. Everything else was fine. We just converted our logistics subsystem from our older ASP format to .NET and he never had to worry about IE8.

Now obviously this is limited to ASP which is Microsoft-friendly, but there is a lot of standard HTML and CSS involved that could go wrong.]]>Jul 24th 2009 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
I have IE8, FF3.5 and Chrome installed and available in my start menu. Chrome has some nice features, like the browser resource profiler that show how much more efficient Chrome and IE8 are than FF3.5.

]]>Jul 24th 2009 3:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/ FF because they ship a 64bit version, Mozilla refuses to write a 64-bit browser. Come on people, this is 2009, all new PCs should come as 64-bit.]]>Jul 24th 2009 3:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 4:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
How are you a web developer and don't know that FF STILL doesn't fully support the HTML4 standard. Tags that IE has supported for years, Tags that have been on BugZilla for years.

The FF team only markets "standards compliance" they don't seem to actually care.

And most people are unlearned about these things, so when a standard breaks in FF they still blame IE for some reason.
]]>Jul 24th 2009 5:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Not a bad deal, albeit more work for MS.]]>Jul 24th 2009 2:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 24th 2009 2:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/
Have you ever used Windows 7 Paint? It is actually a damn good image editor now. Not good enough to make a legitimate Photoshop-quality image, but still very sophisticated.

]]>Jul 24th 2009 4:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/24/microsoft-relents-to-european-commission-will-give-users-browse/Jul 28th 2009 1:38AM