I agree. I’m not anti-Europe by any means but my goodness they really do seem to have NO clue on so many things these days. Not just on this but with so much of this pointless money wasting, bureaucratic, job filling, lawyer paying nonsense!

From experience attempting to upgrade in place leads to grief. I’ve never had upgrade grief, because I’ve never attempted to upgrade in place. Either a clean install or a new machine, works everytime. So Microsoft enforcing this seems like a sensible action, ignoring any whinging about the bundling or not of IE.

Paul, you’ve already hit the problem that MS would face by missing Chrome off your list!

Can you imagine the law suits that would follow. I release my ‘oki koki 2010′ browser then I sue MS for anti-competitive practices because its not included in their ’simple dialogue’. In this instance MS are right, and the Commission are idiots.

Will respecting Richard and Barry Collin’s points – I still agree with Paul.

Obviously this issue has become totemic… but just because there are issues with the EU position, doesn’t mean that Microsoft isn’t also being silly… or sillier.

Can’t we at least agree that the fact Microsoft were able to destroy Netscape in the 90’s, has been bad news for the development of the Web and its standards ever since. IE 8 is _stil_l appallingly clunky… and that’s after years of Firefox (and to a lesser extent Opera) – and more recently Safari and Chrome – forcing it to raise it’s game?

Even by PC Pro standards this is pretty biased. Regardless of the positives or negatives of the EU’s decision, Internet Explorer is far and away the worst browser out there, with the least innovation and very imperfect cargo-cult copying of features to get a tickbox in a comparison.

Without the “vastly inferior” Opera (whose mobile browser smashes IE on the mobile, never mind how much faster and generally better their desktop browser is) or the apparently begrudgingly-led Firefox (”…even Firefox executives admit…” – do they not normally admit things, compared with the always-open Microsoft management?) then we’d all still be running the jaw-droppingly shocking IE6.

Editorials are supposed to be useful opinions on top of the facts, not random rants that fly in the face of them.

Why should Microsoft be forces to bundle 3rd party apps with their OS? If you go down that route then they’ll have to bundle Thunderbird and Incredimail, Nero, Yahoo instant messenger, iTunes… the list goes on.

Microsoft are only doing what they can only do to appease the idiotic bureacrats. Remove the program (IE) – no case to answer. So don’t lay any blame at their feet….

As to Opera being poor, I have to strongly disagree. Standards based and mainly compliant unlike any flavour of IE and I find IE8 terrible and won’t allow me to log in to eBay!

What are users going to do? If they buy a new PC a browser will be selected for them by the manufacturer/seller. So we are back to a no choice situation again. If you do a self-build there’s no browser in the OS so how do you then install one? You have to find a browser with a full installer that is available on CD or you use another PC to download one and transfer it across. Complicated or what….

Also if upgrading from pre-Win7 isn’t available I can hear the howls of anger already as people slide the DVD in and click yes, yes, yes,yes etc. to then find the only partition in their PC (C:) gets wiped along with all their data, holiday photos etc. Is this Microsoft’s fault – NO, the EU forced the situation. Microsoft could have done things differently but why should they – the case was bundling IE was uncompetitive so they’ve removed it negating the case.

Thanks EU for your stunning foresight and help in making the consumer’s life better!!

Well this consumer is not happy. An in place upgrade was what I was banking on for Windows 7. I just don’t enjoy spending hours and hours watching progress bars and then further hours reconfiguring everything from scratch. And what do you do if you have an OEM version of Vista with no supplied CD, just a ‘Recovery Partition’? Colour me distinctly unimpressed with Ms Neelie Kroes.

I agree with Paul above. I use a mixture of IE8, FF, Chrome and Safari 4. Of the 4 I find Safari 4 on Windows the least easy to use. The rest its very much of a muchness – I find FF is better at saving passwords but I like IE8’s privacy mode. I can’t in to a rage about any of the browsers – unlike some here who appear to feel browser choice is a matter of life and death!

The main target of the EU decision are the PC manufacturers and system builders, who can now decide what browser(s) to offer with their PCs. Retail sales of OS’s are a minimal part of the market.

Obviously there is an enormous potential demand for Windows 7 upgrades both from those fed up with Vista and those who have stuck with XP. For XP, upgrade in place was never possible but there is an argument for Vista users who would find an upgrade install far easier to perform.

If Microsoft is going to put a second CD in the pack with IE8, why don’t they offer 2 DVDs one with and one without IE8?

I think we also need to consider that this might just be Microsoft posturing, in which case Barry et al are helping a monopolist win its case.

Rob – Firefox has between 20-30% market share worldwide, according to multiple sources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share) and it continues to grow.

People will naturally find and download good software. They don’t need the EU to help them.

Ive often wondered how apple gets away with locking hardware to its OS and apps to its iphone. is there some reason why the Eu doesnt =investigate them .

My question is when is the EU going to look into the most anti-competitive company of them all… Apple

Jack: Have you used IE8? The accelerators are fantastic and it’s kept me with IE over Firefox, it does what I need it to perfectly… it may have copied Chrome’s idea of using separate processes for separate tabs, but it works beautifully in that if a tab crashes, I don’t lose the whole browser… and Firefox isn’t immune from crashes, at least from my experiences.

As I’ve said all along on this story, the EU have no right to do this to Microsoft unless they do the same for OSX and Linux: the rulse should be the same across the board, regardless of past transgressions.

It’s a very very bad move forced by the EU’s hand and I think the EU’s position is completely indefensible. It’s comparable to the EU’s insistance that Microsoft sell Windows without Media Player: no one bothered buying the n versions and yet there’s no restrictions on iTunes and Mac OSX, even though there’s arguably less competition on Apple’s OS. (Saying that, Media Player is pretty good and significantly better than iTunes on the memory footprint: 12MB playing music and visulisations, against 43MB for iTunes doing nothing).

Doesn’t anyone get it, the reason the EU is after Microsoft is because they are a near monopoly and have used their dominant position to prevent competition and damage competitors. Apple has 5%-6% market share and Linux <1%, so the considerations are entirely different.

It may well be that Apple’s tying the iPod to the iTunes store is anti-competitive and I am sure that the appropriate department in Brussels has reviewed it, but there is no way that Safari on Mac is an equivalent consideration.

What people need to realise is that prior to the EU anti-trust suit Microsoft would not allow manufacturers like Dell to install an alternate browser, so this is real and necessary progress.

to all those who say that Microsoft shouldn’t be collared by the EU just because other companies like Apple are not feeling the heat is a bit like saying we should not convict one murderer because we can’t guarantee that we will convict them all. Treat each case on it’s own merits…if Apple have a case to answer (or anyone else), there should be separate actions from the EU. Microsoft have always felt the heat because they are a huge monopoly and would revert to unethical/underhand tactics if given half the chance. Its because of the EU that we still have OSX and Linux and firefox and all those other choices

“Its because of the EU that we still have OSX and Linux and firefox and all those other choices”

… I REALLY don’t think so. As someone said previously the EU is always fighting yesterday’s battle. There are many reasons we have OSX, Linux, Firefox – EU intervention is well down the list.

An application like Microsoft Office has massive coverage primarily because it’s better than pretty much anything else. Firefox has gained significant market share because it’s good software.

I say to all these software companies – quit moaning – make your product & service the best there is and people will use it.

This is really funny.
What I find most amusing is the point that Microsoft would discriminate by making only some browsers standard and others optional by self-install.
If any of you mind to recall, Microsoft’s IE8 (I’m not sure about earlier versions) asks you which search engine provider you would like to use. Obviously Microsoft has faced a problem much alike this previously and made a reasonable selection of search providers.

The real reason why Microsoft are removing the browser and letting OEM’s choose is because they can then still “force” IE8 on a lot of pre-assembled system.

Otherwise a choice of the four most used browsers or something to that extent would have perfectly sufficed to solve the problem. And it would have been a much more consumer friendly solution.

Sufficient to say that Microsoft forced a radical decision from the EU on themselves by overriding the default browser during on-site upgrades to the Windows 7 Beta and RC.

1. It’s not the EU fighting, it’s Opera. EU is just helping them.
2. It’s not yesterdays battle. As far as I remember browser wars are on the peak of heat with firefox 3.5, opera 10, chrome 2, safari 4 being released, all of which are great browsers. Of course if this was done earlier it would have bigger impact, but I’m sure IE is going to loose some more % of users’ that it earned just by being default.
3. I doubt all manufacturers will bundle IE. We even have quite a lot netbooks with linux bundled, I’m sure some pcs will have other browsers preinstalled.
4. Upgrading windows not being possible due removing of IE is total bullshit from microsoft. IE is just some exe’s, dll’s and configuration files all of which can be deleted when upgrading. As for other settings – why would I need to delete that? Imagine if I install firefox and then when uninstalling it formats my hard drive… Makes no sense? Same as microsoft.
5. As for user’s that reinstall windows themselves – if you can reinstall windows, I’m sure you are computer literate enough to download browser. Is it really so difficult to download copy of your favorite browser to flash drive or w/e?
Finally as a web developer I’m glad to see that IE is being removed. Maybe in some near future we won’t need separate stylesheets for non IE browsers, IE6, IE7 and IE8…

What would be really cool ….. MS went the whole hog and stripped out all the other rubbish out of windows.

@Matt You are the retarded person. And nearly everyone will care because nearly everyone uses Windows, so it affects them.

MS should release one version of Win 7 which can be in-place upgraded and contain IE8 – after the Welcome screens, it should ask the user if he wants to delete it or visit a MS web page which contains links to anyones browser-download page that wants to have a link.
The user can then install one or more alternative browsers and if they wish, remove IE8.
This would be the best way for everyone and allow users to do in-place upgrades.

This is not a problem with the EU.
The EU has taken M$’s continuing illegal business practices to task. It’s exposed M$’s previous excuses for what they are – lies and excuses disguised as technical mumbo-jumbo.

Dig through windows and you’ll still see the phrase “Built on NT technology”. This is mid-nineties code. M$ then (around 1999 when win2k came out) said that IE was “part of the operating system” and so *could not be removed*.
They then obfuscated and instigated a whole sleuth of delaying tactics to eliminate all business competitors.
This ‘technical’ statement, as it turned out following the court cases, and now, as it is even more blindingly obvious, was a pack of lie. In fact, more a stack of lies. M$, by their current actions, have admitted that their previous statements about OS-browser integration were all false, which means the fines and penalties are completely justified and that all the companies that Gates-Balmer crushed have complete right on their side.

The police say that a murder case is never closed until it’s solved. There is no time limit.

So why do the majority of commenters slag off the EU for pursuing to completion the prosecution of the absolute criminal activities of Microsoft and make sure that they pay for their law breaking? Furthermore, why do they want to allow M$ to continue in their illegal ways? If they are not prosecuted and then stopped, then like the naughty child they will continue….
I suggest it’s more a comment on the current state of politics in the UK than any rational attempt to see justice done or promote an environment of software compatability.

Justice and the upholding of laws is *the most important thing* in a civilised society. You must *never* let ‘them’ get away with it, no matter how big they are.
This stuff from the last 15 years (yes, 15) is one set of M$ actions. How many of you are future predictors? None. You cannot tell what new technologies are coming and what new monopolistic practices will evolve alongside. The only thing we have is our laws, and they must be upheld at all times.

So to ridicule the people and the system for trying to do this is idiotic and very short sighted. The history of the 20th century proves this.