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Firefox Exec Says Windows Bundling Is a Bad Idea
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:06 AM
from the bounce-test-failed dept.
from the bounce-test-failed dept.
eldavojohn writes "The Firefox executives say they don't want to be bundled with Windows. Firefox architect Mike Conner also said this of Opera, 'Opera's asserting something that's provably false. It's asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don't know how you can make the claim with a straight face. As people become aware there's an alternative, you don't end up in that [monopoly] situation. You have to be perceptibly better [than Internet Explorer].' He also told PCPro that they are worried about becoming the next monopoly just like Microsoft is now."
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Your Rights Online: Mozilla To Join EU Suit Against Microsoft 422 comments
CWmike writes "The European Commission (EC) has granted Mozilla the right to join its antitrust case against Microsoft, a spokesman said Monday. If the charges stick, Microsoft could be forced to change the way it distributes IE, as well as pay a fine for monopoly abuse. Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's chairperson, said in a blog over the weekend that there isn't 'the single smallest iota of doubt' that Microsoft's tying of IE to Windows 'harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice.'"
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What does a Open Source monopoly look like? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Mozilla in a monopoly situation would be an interesting case study because it would be completely unique - somehow it manages to dominate market share, and yet its competitors can copy any of its features or redistribute their own flavor of the same product?
Is a monopoly even possible for an open source company? Is a monopoly possible for anyone possible when everyone is using a share-and-share-alike license like the GPL?
Re:What does a Open Source monopoly look like? (Score:5, Insightful)
it would be completely unique somehow it manages to dominate market share, and yet its competitors can copy any of its features or redistribute their own flavor of the same product?
Unique is a bit strong. See: Apache. Bind. Sendmail. Wordpress/Drupal/Joomla. Virtually any open source project that can be said to "dominate market share" would apply.
Parent
Re:What does a Open Source monopoly look like? (Score:4, Informative)
To be an illegal monopoly, you have to have both a dominant market share AND you have to implement any of a variety of shitty anti-competitive business practices.
Being dominant is not, in and of itself, enough to make a company or product an illegal monopoly.
Fixed that for you. GP wasn't referring to illegal per se, just monopoly. It's perfectly legal to be a monopoly and not engage in anti-competitive business practices.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Is a monopoly even possible for an open source company?
Just because another company can rebundle open source software doesn't mean that they can make money with it, after all its hard to compete with a product that costs $0. So its completly possible to run all the competition into the ground with an open source product. That of course doesn't mean that your monopoly will run forever, when it gets to bad somebody might create a better fork, but that can take years. And the chance of starting a completly new product with similar goals is also rather smallish, si
Note to self (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Note to self (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Note to self (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean bundling IE did not kill Netscape, which at the time, was the dominant browser? Yes, it assuredly did. Bundling provably leads to market share when the bundled product has equivalent or near equivalent properties of the alternatives. IE currently lags far behind the alternatives -- so of course there is room for competitors. Still IE manages over %60 share and its peak (prior to *compelling* alternatives) had over 90% share. This can only be satisfactorily explained by the fact that IE was bundled with the OS that was bundled with the PCs that users were buying.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comeback is that 'vs Netscape we did AWESOME when bundling' which has nothing to do with the Firefox campaign since Netscape was another company entirely and we were talkin
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I actually commented on this a while back (not as a mass suggestion, but how I - personally - grab firefox on a new windows install).
The funny thing is that it is clear you've never done this - or at least it has been too long since you have to adopt a Socratic attitude.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The browser is just a TOOL within the OS. But most end users are incompetent monkeys without a browser so while your metaphor is bad, your point is still valid. Which is why I stated above that the power can be put within the hands of the OEM as long as the browser is not HARD CODED as part of the OS; it can al
Re:Note to self (Score:5, Insightful)
It was more than just bundling. If all they did was bundle, it wouldn't have been a problem.
It's the integration of MSIE to Windows, the integration of MSIE to MS Office, the integration and support of only MSIE into other Microsoft products that is a problem. It is the active encouragement of developers to develop only for MSIE to the exclusion of others that is a problem.
Just having an application there is no guarantee that anyone would use it.
Parent
Bundling did not kill Netscape (Score:4, Interesting)
Netscape 3.0 was about even with IE3 in terms of crappiness.
But Netscape Navigator 4.x was worse than it's competitor. It was flaky and crashed a lot.
Then it took ages for the Netscape team to come up with something better - they threw out everything and tried to rewrite this Mozilla thing from scratch. Fine.
Trouble is there was a LONG gap between Navigator 4.x and something significantly less crap. It took them YEARS.
Netscape Navigator 4.08 => 1998, Navigator 4.8 => 2002. 4 years and that code branch did not really improve significantly.
As for the Mozilla branch? Netscape 6 and 7 aka Mozilla 0.6 to 1.0 were not worth using. Bloated and buggy.
Honestly, when did Mozilla actually start to be good enough for "Aunt May" to use? I'd say maybe sometime after 2005? 2006?
Firefox/Mozilla was leaking tons of memory for ages (still does sometimes). Even though IE also leaks memory in some cases, the thing is you can easily start multiple instances of IE whereas it's hard to do the same with FF/Mozilla. I remember Mozilla and Opera giving me memory consumption problems even in 2005.
They only started making significant inroads in fixing memory leaks and other problems _recently_.
So what was Joe Sixpack to use between 1998 and 2006? Mozilla was too crap. Opera? Opera used to either cost money, or be ad ridden (till 2005).
IE was crap, but it was the least crap choice for most people.
Yes bundling of IE hurt Netscape - especially in the dial up days - try downloading Netscape 6 over a 33.6 modem. But the main problem was the early "Mozilla" Netscapes weren't worth downloading even if they were quarter the size.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to metion how many users they are losing to Google Chrome I hardly run FF anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If Firefox hit 95% market share the proportion of net users using AdBlock would undoubtedly be high enough that a lot of sites would move to some plugin or other for their content - Flash, Silverlight or something new, most likely one with DRM. Just as software pirates brought about DRM for games, music and movies, ad-blockers ("web pirates" seems an appropriate term - they take stuff without paying for it) will bring about DRM for the web. And it'll suck. And the people who bitch the loudest about it will
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Shouldn't that be "jump the shark".
Consistently, every new version of Firefox comes with a larger installation footprint, larger use of resources, larger lock in to Google who "sponsor" their development in return for a default search etc etc. They seem to have lost their way from version 1, which was a great little browser.
By the time they reach version 7, do you think they'll be any less corporate influenced, any less bloated and any more useful than anything MS will have to offer at that point ?
The Next Monopoly (Score:2)
Opera's asserting something that's provably false. It's asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don't know how you can make the claim with a straight face.
"...they are worried about becoming the next monopoly just like Microsoft is now."
I'm not sure how either of these statements can be made with a straight face.
First of all, how are browsers being measured in terms of market share? What happens when there are multiple brands installed in the same seat? How about VM images?
And how twisted is logic of "we don't want to be offered with the most dominant OS ever produced because we may become the most dominant browser, which would be bad"...?! What's up with that?
Bundling doesn't crearte market share? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell that to anyone who refers to the blue 'E' as "The Internet".
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bundling doesn't crearte market share? (Score:5, Interesting)
It took me almost an hour to explain that the blue E is not Windows and another hour to explain that she does NOT need the blue E. I installed both Firefox (w/Adblock, Flashblock, etc) and Opera for her and showed her she doesn't need the blue E. Then, I told her not to use Internet Explorer again.
Wouldn't it have just been easier to change the Firefox icon to the IE icon and been done with it? ;)
Not that I've ever done anything like that of course.....
Parent
Replacing IE on dad's machine (Score:4, Insightful)
For my dad's machine, I just delete the quicklaunch icon for IE, install FF, and tell him "just click this orange and blue thingie instead of the blue E. It's the same thing". Works fine.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I did the "replace the icon" thing to my dad once and he couldn't get his hotmail.com account to "work right". It was a real long time ago and I forget the exact problem, so don't reply saying FF works fine with hotmail.com. Needless to say, I begrudgingly switched it back so that it'd work.
Imagine... (Score:3, Funny)
... a virus doing just that?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bundling doesn't crearte market share? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm so tired of this mantra. Elitists have been chanting this line for at least 5 years now. It's not insightful. It's not informative. It's just the same old shit that adds nothing to the discussion.
Are we going to keep modding it up when there's still 1 user left who thinks "the blue E is the internet"?
Hell, even my grandpa uses Firefox. He may think it's the internet, but god damnit, he knows it's the better internet.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I deal with end users every day, lots of them think "the blue e" is "the windows", "the internet", "windows internet", "microsoft outlook" and so on. These are people who don't care and even if you carefully explain why maybe they should care just a little they become irate and lash out since "it's your job to make sure my internets work!"; try pulling that one on your mechanic after you just drove your car into a river because "well cars SHOULD float, now fix it and stop telling me how to drive!"...
/Mikael
Weird view (Score:5, Insightful)
If being better than IE at the same price (free) leads only to a 20% marketshare, then to me this *strengthen* the argument that bundling is an effective way to assert a monopoly, not disprove it.
Beside given the size of Firefox or Opera, users on dialup may feel quite annoyed by having to download them..
Re:Weird view (Score:5, Insightful)
If being better
How to you quantify "better?" I know you can say FF is faster, or more standards complaint or whatever.. but I supsect the average user doesn't case about these things. If both FF and IE display the webpages they want, and the user don't care about anything else... in what way is FF "better?"
Parent
Re:Weird view (Score:4, Insightful)
If being better
How to you quantify "better?" I know you can say FF is faster, or more standards complaint or whatever.. but I supsect the average user doesn't case about these things. If both FF and IE display the webpages they want, and the user don't care about anything else... in what way is FF "better?"
Ever met a user who used tabbed browser windows then voluntarily gave them up? They were an enormous UI improvement for the vast majority of users. Firefox implemented them for five years before IE added them. That's just one example, but for almost any area you look at IE has been lagging the competition significantly.
I'd also mention that there is one area where IE is ahead and that is in its ability to read broken pages written specifically for IE. I'd also note this area of being "better" is an artificial feature caused by their intentional, illegal abuse of their monopoly position.
Parent
Bundling bad? (Score:2)
Like MS or not, bundling has made MS the company they are today, with more than enough money to pay fines from those who object... as for Mozilla becoming the next big monopoly, they are getting ahead of themselves. They need to keep doing their good work to keep growing the business... dream big, but keep doing the little things... they have along way to go
Why Not Bundle? (Score:5, Insightful)
My own experience thus far has been that without bundling Firefox, it is primarily technical users who are encouraging the non-technical to actually use it. I know my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, etc. all generally use whatever comes with their computer, which is Internet Explorer. They knew nothing about Firefox until I heavily promoted it and provided easy to access download links for them. This was only done because I grew tired of trying to explain why they kept getting infected with malware and viruses through IE. Most did not even know it is possible to browse the web with anything else.
By bundling an alternative, the masses have access to choice. I don't agree with Conner that we should simply expect people to want to go out and research and naturally find Firefox. Bundling does not imply stuffing an alternative down someones throat. It merely provides an easy mechanism towards an alternative. And for the non-technical, just awareness of an alternative is a huge win.
FireFox is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bundling isn't the biggest reason IE users switched to IE, it was because IE4 was better than Netscape Navigator. I'm writing big and long posts about Vista being better than Ubuntu, and I think that it is, but I would never in my right mind use IE7 over Firefox. Although, frankly, right now my favorite browser is Google Chrome. In any case, this isn't like 1994 when people did not know how to download software. Right now, people download stuff all the time, from chat programs to games and utilities, and wallpapers, songs, and more. None of that is bundled, but people manage fine. Same thing with browsers.
I mean, Paint is bundled with Windows, but that hasn't stopped anyone from making their own paint programs, now has it?
Reasoning Fail. (Score:3, Informative)
MSIE has the largest installation base because MS Windows has the largest installation base. If you don't think that this constitutes a biasing force, you are not thinking... and you are certainly not a Web developer who has had to deal with MSIE 5 and 6.
MS Paint is next to useless. Mentioning it does not support your position. MS Notepad has not stopped people from using real editors, or MS Word, either.
Re:Let's see here (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly he is correct about IE being better than netscape at one point in time. Netscape after being bought by AOL went down the tubes and IE was one of the best that was available for Windows in my opinion. Unfortunately there are still a few sites that do not work in firefox for me and I have to suffer through IE, but other than that I never use it anymore.
Vista for some uses (users) is better than Ubuntu. There are games that do not run on Ubuntu, I cannot easily update my blackberry (without hacks anyway) on Ubuntu. I still have to dual boot my laptop for a few things. It doesn't mean that Vista is a superior operating system, it just means for somethings/people it is better. If I get marked troll so be it.
Parent
i agree with him completely (Score:4, Funny)
after all, look how miserably microsoft failed trying to dent netscape's marketshare when it started bundling internet explorer with windows
will anyone ever take netscape down as top dog of the browser wars?
i'm going to choke (Score:4, Insightful)
the next person i see who writes "correlation does not equal causation"
it's a mindless kneejerk reply, and it insults the intelligence of anyone reading your words
1. it announces with smarmy glee a concept that your audience already knows
2. a lot if not most times correlation does actually reveal causation
i wish i had the power to singlehandedly wipe that meme from every reply i ever read a again. it's an insulting mindless remark that pisses people off. next time, just explain why you believe what you believe about cause and effect, and leave out the patronizing smarmy "correlation!=causation" please
no, it does not come as an amazing mind blowing observation when you point it out for the 10,000th time, can you believe it?
Parent
Way to miss the real issue, pcpro (Score:5, Insightful)
Way to miss the issue there, PC Pro.
The courts have found that the bundling of MSIE is anti-competitive and in violation of antitrust laws. Just how would bundling Firefox on Windows remove MSIE from the base sysem? Oh, I see, it wouldn't.
Look if the remedy for anti-competitive and predatory business practices is to remove MSIE, then just remove it. It doesn't matter how many other similar applications are pre-installed, when it is the presence of MSIE, not the absence of other applications, which is in violation of the law.
Provable? (Score:5, Insightful)
'Opera's asserting something that's provably false. It's asserting that bundling leads to market share.
Go on then. Prove it.
Re:Provable? (Score:4, Insightful)
The claim is underspecified. It is, however, easily true for at least one straightforward interpretation.
To wit:
Firefox achieved 20% market share without bundling.
I think that's his point. That it is not bundling only that leads to market share.
Parent
Provable. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think maybe it's still not clear what he's saying. Let's try this:
If bundling is what leads to market share, how did Firefox get 20%?
See what he's trying to say? Why is it so hard for people to get this?
There are two ways that bundling does not lead to market share. Here:
He didn't say these things in the clearest way. Certainly what he said was easily misinterpreted. But he can be reasonably understood to mean this, especially in context. Sure he could have spoken better, but, geez, let's be active readers and mentally insert some adverbs until the quote makes sense.
Parent
He is wrong. it does. (Score:5, Insightful)
there are millions of people in each country that have NO idea of what does even a 'web browser' mean. for them, they open up windows, and then connect to 'internet'. internet explorer is 'internet' for them. leave aside trying out new 'browsers' ...
and no, you cant discount these people. for, these are the masses.
What if MS bundles Firefox? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if Microsoft bundled Firefox with Windows. 90% of the browser war wasn't based on who had the better browser, it was about controlling the home page. When it all comes down to it, I don't really think MS would care if everyone used Firefox. What they probably care most about is when people first start up their browser...it opens to a page controlled by Microsoft. It amazes me that so many people never change their home page.
So let's say Microsoft throws in the towel and bundle firefox with windows...and have its home page set to msn.com. It would really be a win/win for Microsoft.
My observation is that people who use IE use Microsoft's search quite a bit and people who use Firefox use Google more.
Microsoft might actually be better off to bundle Firefox and control the home page.
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
The key thing that you have to remember is that IE5 was honest to God the superior browser in its day. It was small, it was fast, and it was more standards compliant than the competition. Plus it didn't crash when you nested DIVs or TABLEs. In comparison, Netscape was a joke. A joke that quite a few users hung to religiously, but a joke none the less.
Now the tables have been turned. IE6/7/8 is the Netscape of today. It's a joke compared to the competition. Some people hold to it religiously, but most are ready to move on. Bundling is definitely helping to prop up IE, but there's more to it than that. IE is primarily held in place at corporations where the "corporate standard" requires IE. (Usually IE6.) This is partly due to a lot of poorly written applications on the market. But partly it's due to the mono-culture idea that Microsoft perpetrated in organizations. i.e. If it's made by Microsoft, it's made for Windows, and therefore is superior to a product that is not made for Windows.
Some IT professionals even believe that using IE means that they can rely on the Windows Update Service to keep their desktops secure. They are suspicious of Firefox and other alternative browsers because their update services are separate from Windows. Little do they seem to know that they are walking right into the lion's mouth...
Parent
Re:Ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It's Bull Shit (TM) from the Wintel People. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't even get myself to read the article when I see quotes like this:
"It's asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don't know how you can make the claim with a straight face."
And if anyone falls for this, they need to look in the mirror and ask themselves, who they'll be suckered by next.
When you own the distribution channel as Microsoft does, bundling is _instant_ market share. And it helps when your have a very ignorant customers who take little to no time to try another product to see if it is better. _Better_ doesn't matter to most Windows users because they are mostly have very little understanding of the thing to begin with. And don't tell them that, they think they know everything there is to know about computers. After all, they know how to use MS Office. IMO.
LoB
Parent
Re:It's Bull Shit (TM) from the Wintel People. (Score:4, Insightful)
Whenever I see a quote from someone involved with Mozilla, it almost always makes the guy seem like an idiot. I'm hoping the people who get quoted are the superfluous executives and don't really have much influence on the quality of the product.
Bundling doesn't lead to market share, hey? Let's see... who has the biggest market share? It wouldn't be the only product that's bundled, would it?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not convinced that bundling of third-party software leads to marketshare the same way that having IE as the default browser on Microsoft OSes does. In fact IE got its market share not with simple bundling, but by being the *only* browser on new installations of Windows, the same way Safari achieves marketshare on Macs.
I used to use Firefox/Mozilla exclusively on all of my computers. I'd even install it on my friends' and family's computers and convince them to use it, too. Back in the day, it was eas
Re:It's Bull Shit (TM) from the Wintel People. (Score:4, Insightful)
Love it.
Now what if your car comes bundled with 3 steering wheels. The MS wheel comes attached to the steering column in front of the drivers seat, and the other two are in a compartment in the trunk. (The Firefox wheel can change colors and has a button that makes your headlights blink on and off. The Opera wheel is a little smaller, and just has a simple horn button.)
You can swap the steering wheels around, but whenever you get your car serviced they upgrade you to a new MS wheel installed on the column for free, and put your other wheel back in the compartment in the trunk (its part of the EULA... you just didn't read it).
Would you use those other wheels?
Parent
Re:Way to Miss the Issue, PCPro. (Score:4, Insightful)
"'Bundling' that forbids vendors from including other programs is where M$ falls foul of the market and law."
Law yes. Market no. The market has no preferences toward stability or growth in any long-term situation or biases towards any greater good. The market is an unthinking non-entity that is invoked to gloss over ideas and trends which economists don't fully understand.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the Eu wants to force MS to bundle additional software into their OS, then fine, the EU should also be paying for the extra space that software takes on my HD.
Yeah, and they should pay for the gas it takes for transporting all those safety features in your car too. Or you could, you know, delete the browsers you don't want.
For all those who complain about big-gov't and their hand in the cookie-jar - this is it.
Blah blah blah.
This is the government stopping corporate criminals instead of being easily bribed like the US government was. I wish US politicians has as much integrity.
This is a company, Opera, crying to the gov't because Opera failed at their product. How did they fail?
Opera makes its money with Opera Mobile. They're doing well. They're also spending millions needlessly in order to work around slews of broken Web pages that investigations ha