Microsoft Giving Rival Browsers a Lift 272
gollum123 tips an article at the NY Times on the progress of the European Windows browser choice screen that we have been discussing recently. "Rivals of Microsoft's market-leading Web browser have attracted a flurry of interest since the company, fulfilling a regulatory requirement, started making it easier for European users of its Windows operating system to switch. Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is the strongest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer worldwide, said that more than 50,000 people had downloaded Firefox via a 'choice screen' that has been popping up on Windows-equipped computers in Europe since the end of last month. ... Opera Software, based in Oslo, said downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland, and Spain had tripled since the screen began to appear. Microsoft said it was too early to tell whether the choice screen might prompt significant numbers of users to change. The digital ballot is being delivered over the Internet with software updates, and it is expected to take until mid-May to complete the process. The browser choice will also be presented to buyers of new Windows computers across the European Union for five years."
How is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
X Y Z Means eXtreme eYebally microZoft, of course.
Seriously, though, this was really expected. It's not that people actually like the browsers in such cases, but they just randomly click. I've had my grandfather randomly picking Firefox already; I've had my grandmother clicking an add that says "You are visitor 1M, you win a big prize!". It's the fact that many people are still "ignorant" or careless towards this question.
The dialog pops-up: "CHOOSE THY BROWSER".
Reaction: "What the hell is a browser? Choose? I just want to 'surf' the 'internet'. Hell, this one with the shiny colors and the fancy name should be good, I'll click it. [double-clicks instead of single-clicking]."
All in all, I'm glad that people are being given the choice. But, really, those of us who care about it, already had the means to do it; it's the fact that we're fucking upset that other people don't get pulled into using them...
Jorl has spoken. Now mod up/down/sideways.
Re:informed decisions? (Score:1, Interesting)
The choice screen is turning out to be a complete mess. I have friends/family calling me saying their "internet" is different, and they don't know what to do. As usual, the uninformed are just clicking away until the pop-ups disappear. Although most people on /. might say IE is the root of all evil, something in me thinks this should have been an opt-in for current users & required during a Win7 installation.
Re:Opera with or without ads? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how much money they ever made from ads, and if they regret it, given that 5 years on they're still trying to lose the bad aroma it produced? It was bad enough wading through all the ads on the net, without extra ads built into the browser - what were they thinking?
Opera - the browser that could have been king.
Just a thought (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Overreach. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes they do. Oh, certainly there are individuals who can choose not to. On slashdot they're probably the majority. But the general population? If they want a computer, they go to a computer store, where they're offered a choice between Vista and Windows 7, if they're lucky. They might realize that a mac is an alternative, but they'll quickly find out that they have hundreds of dollars of software that won't run on it. They might realize that Linux is an alternative, but finding a place that sells a computer without Windows (or OSX) on it is very difficult for the non-technically-inclined, especially once they realize it'll cost at least as much as the version with Windows. They teach MS office in public schools, and then there are all the businesses that are locked into windows by custom applications that won't run without Windows.
Apple has nowhere near the monopoly that MS does, and they haven't tried to leverage it to nearly the same extent.
Re:Overreach. (Score:5, Interesting)
What if I started a class action suit against Apple because Itunes is installed by default, and that is a "monopoly" on digital music storefronts?
You have your cart and horse backwards. First, iTunes the application is not a monopoly of any sort. OS X is not a monopoly of any sort. That leaves iTunes the service, which as a lot of market share in the US. That means Apple can't bundle OS X with that service, but they don't they bundle the application with the OS and tie the service to the application.
If Apple required OS X to use iTunes, you'd have a case. If Apple forced people to buy a copy of OS X to buy a song on iTunes, you'd have a case. In fact though, Apple is moving iTunes to a Web interface to remove the tie with the application as they approach monopoly levels of market share... Which is probably the best you could hope for from any lawsuit regarding it. Apple can't leverage OS X's monopoly influence to promote iTunes because OS has no monopoly influence. Apple isn't leveraging iTunes service monopoly to promote anything in particular.
What the fuck is society coming to.
It is now and always has been a clamoring crowd of ignorance. People who insist on expressing their uneducated opinions without bothering to understand the topic even superficially first.
Re:Opera with or without ads? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when are one or two people enough to assume a globally smelt “bad aroma”??
Actually those are the first two I know, who even know or remember Opera having ads. Geeks.
Meanwhile, my whole family loves Opera. And in Poland, I hear, it’s the number one browser. :)
Also, everybody here who tried surfing over the phone, has heard of Opera.
So that’s what most people know of it.
I usually get two reactions from people I recommend Opera to:
1. They don’t know what it is. But since I show that I like Opera, and they can feel it, they get drawn in.
2. After a week or so, they wouldn’t want to miss it.
For some it’s Firefox, and that is just as good.
Only for IE users I have no heart at all. Since I used to be a webdev. And that thing has caused my nights to be nightmares for years. I would right here sign a law that said that every person using IE past next month will get shot. Without blinking. That’s how horrible it was. Like a war wound kinda...
EU (Score:5, Interesting)
kudos to the European union.
this and reading they will oppose ACTA's 3strike rule makes me want to join
Re:Overreach. (Score:3, Interesting)
Except that Windows (and IE) are not a monopoly. Are they the largest player? Yes, but there are alternatives (for those who really care, there's Linux), for everyone else there's Apple.
For what software?
Remember, there now exist lots of essential line-of-business applications which simply do not have a non-Windows port.
'Run OSX' is not much of an answer if your factory runs CustomWidgetMaker0.3 written in Delphi, QuickBasic, DOS batch scripting and Excel macros.
Stats without context are useless (Score:2, Interesting)
Ballot screen installed, where is it? (Score:2, Interesting)
I got the browser ballot app pushed out via Windows update installed on several of my machines recently, including XP, Vista and Win7. Funny thing is, I have never actually seen the ballot screen. It's never appeared. I haven't located an applet for it or any way to make it appear. Bit strange.
Could it be because IE is not a default browser on any of these machines? Probably.