Hi all,
I'm sure some of you remember the anti trust case of the European Commission against Microsoft in 2009.
The argument back then was: "Microsoft's tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice."
As a result Microsoft agreed to not bundle the Internet Explorer with Windows 7 in Europe. Instead users got a "ballot box" to chose a browser. According to Wikipedia[1] the "ballot box" was removed two years later with a update, in March 2013 the European Commission fined Microsoft €561 million.
Now, 9 years later I read "Microsoft to ‘warn’ Windows 10 users not to install Chrome or Firefox"[2]. So 9 years later the dialog is back again, but it does the complete opposite this time. It warns user to install anything else beside Microsoft Edge.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission [2] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17850146/microsoft-windows-10-chrome-fire...
Cheers, Björn
On Wednesday 12. September 2018 16.05.04 Bjoern Schiessle wrote:
Hi all,
I'm sure some of you remember the anti trust case of the European Commission against Microsoft in 2009.
[...]
Now, 9 years later I read "Microsoft to ‘warn’ Windows 10 users not to install Chrome or Firefox"[2]. So 9 years later the dialog is back again, but it does the complete opposite this time. It warns user to install anything else beside Microsoft Edge.
Why am I not surprised? Then again, I am not one of the people who claims that "Microsoft have changed" every time someone points out the company's poor behaviour.
Sadly, the proper remedy back in 2009 (or actually a lot earlier) would have been to mandate genuine operating system choice by forcing Windows to be unbundled completely. Having a choice of installable operating systems instead of the browser preference dialogue would have dealt with the underlying problem as well as other things that have been considered by the European Commission throughout the years.
So, the media player situation, which resulted in a ruling against Microsoft that, if I recall correctly, the company deliberately violated "by accident", would also have been solved by a more thorough remedy. And it would have avoided the issue of what kind of software an operating system distribution should provide, which was really the only controversial aspect of these rulings.
Paul
Le 12/09/2018 à 16:05, Bjoern Schiessle a écrit :
Now, 9 years later I read "Microsoft to ‘warn’ Windows 10 users not to install Chrome or Firefox"[2]. So 9 years later the dialog is back again, but it does the complete opposite this time. It warns user to install anything else beside Microsoft Edge.
Hi, I don't understand why this is showed as a test. In the university I works in, since we deploy window$ 10(for around a year I would guess), this message has always been there. We've got scheduled tasks installing some free tools in background on all computers(we use "Fusion Inventory"), including Mozilla Firefox. At the first launch(on each single one user session), it asks if we want it to be the default browser(I don't remember if there was this problem with window$ Seven). When we choose "yes", here comes the first change from previous window$ OSses: the change can't be made directly. There's a sort of protection in the OS preventing it and redirecting the request to a "default software manager". This last one take a little time to launch, sometimes stay in the background, it's not very user-friendly. When we look at it, there's a list of software roles like "media player", "map browser", "Mail manager", "Web browser" and so on. Let's say it's a sort of graphical equivalent to GNU/Linux alternatives system. And so here the user can choose to change the application linked to each category, opening drop-down menus regarding each one of these. As far as I am concerned, the tool doesn't complain when we change any of these software selections, except... the Web browser. When we choose another one than Edge(I don't know what happens if we choose IE, didn't tested or do not remember!), the a window saying something like "Edge is a new great Web browser, fast and reliable. Are you sure to want to replace it?" appears and we have a big button "No, keep it as my default browser". Theres a little text, like a Web link, saying "Yes I'm sure". Well I won't again complain here about the fact that I'm completely sure we lost the free software battle, but if you read some of my previous mails here, you know how much I'm pessimistic regarding the future of our Earth and its inhabitants.