Microsoft, Windows 7, the EU and common sense

Monday, July 27th, 2009

The world’s gone crazy. Surely Microsoft can’t have decided to do what’s been blindingly obvious to the rest of the world for eternity and – gasp – offer users a choice of web browsers when they install Windows 7? And thus, in one fell and seemingly easy swoop, appease the EU and its browser-producing competition?

But by jingo it has, at least if today’s news story (Microsoft to offer browser choice with Windows 7) is to be believed. During installation, you’ll get the choice of five (Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari), rendering the EU’s objection of Microsoft exploiting its monopolistic position irrelevant. (more…)

Broken Windows – are you happy now EU?

Friday, June 12th, 2009

And so the EU’s pointless vendetta against Microsoft reaches its ridiculous conclusion: Microsoft will now ship Windows 7 in Europe without any web browser whatsoever.  The pathetic gripes of a vastly inferior competitor – yes, I’m talking about you Opera – have concluded with the EU making life harder for consumers, PC manufacturers and, ironically, Opera itself.

PC manufacturers will of course bundle a browser with any new Windows 7 PC, and I wouldn’t mind betting that the only browser the vast majority will choose to bundle is Internet Explorer.

And what about people who buy Windows 7 off the shelf? A spokesperson for Microsoft Europe said the company will provide a free IE8 CD-ROM with every retail copy of Windows 7. So the company’s still effectively bundling IE8 – it’s just making consumers jump through a few more hoops to install the browser. Utterly, utterly pointless.

(more…)

Opera: the pacifist in the browser war

Monday, October 13th, 2008

I’ve spent the morning chatting to a few guys from Opera, and a lovelier group of folk you couldn’t hope to meet. In a wide ranging chat over Espressos, we discussed everything from who the best drinkers are among the current crop of browser developers, to the importance of web standards. However, the one thing that really caught my attention was a point raised by Opera’s product manager, Roberto Mateu. 

“There’s places in Eastern Europe, Indonesia, China where huge amounts of people are leap-frogging desktops altogether and going straight on to browsing on phones. In those places 2.5G is going to be around for a while, and it’s about giving them a choice.”

There’s something in this. I spent a year of my life living in China and the culture surrounding the desktop is very different to Europe. Chinese people get incredibly subsidised packages on mobiles, and the network charges are buttons. Computers, on the other hand, remain expensive. As a result there’s a huge swathe of people using their phones to browse, and not touching the desktop at all. When they do, it’s generally in internet cafes and for gaming, meaning the browser doesn’t get a look in. This is now a cultural thing, a way of seeing the desktop computer and its potential uses. It’s also unlikely to change in the near future.

(more…)