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The Courts Microsoft The Internet Technology

Microsoft Tweaks Browser Ballot As EU Deal Nears 187

CWmike writes "Microsoft has revamped the browser ballot screen demanded by European Union antitrust regulators and may get final approval as early as Dec. 15, a source familiar with the case has told Computerworld. As first reported by Bloomberg, Microsoft modified the ballot screen after rivals, including Opera Software and Mozilla, demanded changes. Last month, Opera, Mozilla and Google submitted change requests to the European Commission, asking that the order of the browsers be randomized and that the ballot be displayed in its own application, not in Internet Explorer. According to the source, who asked not to be identified because the terms of the settlement have not been officially approved, the top five browsers — IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Apple's Safari — will appear in random order each time the ballot is displayed."
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Microsoft Tweaks Browser Ballot As EU Deal Nears

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  • Nice hair! (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Itninja ( 937614 )
    If they appear one at a time in random order, and assuming the browser names' first letter is the first thing in each line, we could occasionally get COIFS!
  • Well, randomly, we'll always get IE at the top of the list.

    http://xkcd.com/221/ [xkcd.com]

  • The top five browsers — IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Apple's Safari — will appear in random order each time the ballot is displayed

    If you have any idea what a "browser" is, and which browser you need, which most people simply don't, then you wouldn't need random order to "help you" in your choice. We know what this is really about: the other 4 browser makers hoping to gain some market share by confusing the Windows users. I'll call it the casino browser installer. Make your lucky pick!

    I wonder how long it would be before a bunch of lawyers make a company with a quick Firefox clone and sue EU/Microsoft for not being included in that

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all have decently large user bases. This entire idiotic situation is arising because Opera is upset that most people don't like their browser. It's rather immature and the only reason the EU is going along with it is so that they could take another few million from MS to line politicians pockets.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        This entire idiotic situation is arising because Opera is upset that most people don't like their browser.

        It would be rather ironic if this additional exposure to unsuspecting users backfires as people start sharing "avoid the Opera option in the ballot, it's bad", and that creates an overall bad image causing Opera's market share to plunge additionally.

        I am an occasional Opera user (and well of all browsers, as a web dev), and appreciate its strengths, but its UI and features have a number of specifics compared to other browsers, not the least of which is a single-click file sharing server. For this type of

        • It would be rather ironic if this additional exposure to unsuspecting users backfires as people start sharing "avoid the Opera option in the ballot, it's bad", and that creates an overall bad image causing Opera's market share to plunge additionally.

          Except it wont because Opera is great.

          I am an occasional Opera user (and well of all browsers, as a web dev), and appreciate its strengths, but its UI and features have a number of specifics compared to other browsers, not the least of which is a single-click file sharing server. For this type of functiona we know is a security nightmare in the hands of the average user (or unsuspectingly, their children).

          so your saying people are too stupid for this browser? and its browsers fault?

          • I love Opera, which is my main browser and has been for a looong itme - mouse gestures, speed... FTW), but "people are too stupid for this browser? and its browsers fault?": YES.

            If a piece of software targetting ... everyone... is too hard / risky to use by the average user (or, rather, the general populace) then YES, it's its fault.

            I personally don't think Opera's file sharing is very risky (Opera is NOT MS, they know their security), and it's a very handy feature. But, generally speaking, I disagree with

      • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05, 2009 @01:23AM (#30333092)
        What is doubly sad is that Opera has exclusive contracts with many cellphone and others companies that ensure the Opera browser is the only one on that platform yet they bitch about this.
        • it's not quite the same

          in the mobile market, they had a chance to present their product, and argue their case with OEMs. Obviously, OEMs liked what they saw.

          on the desktop, they got no such chance, and most people are too lazy / stupid to check them out.

          In both cases, users are still free to change browsers. Except on the iPhone ^^

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by devman ( 1163205 )
            Explain to me why they can't go to OEM's like Dell and convince them to install Opera?
            • Because MS has been PROVEN and JUDGED GUILTY of using its OS monopoly to force other products (ie...IE) down OEMs' and users' throats.

              Once upon a time, IE was even designed to be deeply intertwined with Windows and be un-removable. Don't know if that's still the case.

              Since one browser is already too complicated for most people, OEMs don't want to pre-install, let alone make default, another one. And get on MS's bad side. They figure the 5% of people knowledgeable enough to want that can do it by themselves.

            • by fbjon ( 692006 )

              Explain to me why they can't go to OEM's like Dell and convince them to install Opera?

              Are you sure they haven't already?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          What is doubly sad is that Opera has exclusive contracts with many cellphone and others companies that ensure the Opera browser is the only one on that platform yet they bitch about this.

          What is triply sad is that Opera's mobile browser sucks. I dropped my data plan when I had a phone with Opera, because the web was so useless via Opera mobile.

      • by BrentH ( 1154987 ) on Saturday December 05, 2009 @05:54AM (#30333978)
        Opera is hands down the most used browser in Eastern Europe. Market share of Opera is never below 40% there, and often over 50. So you can drag all the politics you want into this (you are an American after all), the simple fact of the matter is that Opera is actually used, a lot, in large parts of Europe, much moreso than Safari for example, and therefore should be in such a ballot screen.
        • What else do you want to use on mobile devices? Frankly, I find IE unusable on e.g. an iPAQ.

          Since most access of the Internet goes through mobile devices -- unless you are in the somewhat lagging-behind US -- I can see how Opera is up there.

        • I never said that "Opera shouldn't be on the ballot screen" I was saying that "there shouldn't be a ballot screen" because those who care about non-IE broswers already download and install them on their own. If, like you say, Opera really does have a 40% share in Europe, then that means that Europeans are well aware of what Opera is, how to download it, and how to install it -- which makes the entire ballot screen pointless. Opera is just bitching that people voluntarily choose not to use their browser.

        • Opera is not the most used browser on Computers though. It's mostly used in handheld devices, which are used far more often for internet access than computers in eastern europe.

          I use opera on my phone as well, and frankly, I hate it. It's AJAX support is terrible, typically causing entire page refreshes every few seconds when using ajax apps like gmail.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Arker ( 91948 )

      If you have any idea what a "browser" is, and which browser you need, which most people simply don't, then you wouldn't need random order to "help you" in your choice. We know what this is really about: the other 4 browser makers hoping to gain some market share by confusing the Windows users.

      Err, no, they are hoping to gain some market share of confused windows users. A demographic that now goes nearly 100% to IE, profitting MicroSoft, the authors of confusion.

    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Nope. People will just stop before clicking (or come back to it later, provided there's an option), call their friend who knows more about computers than they do to get advice. It's like how everyone in a group of friends ends up with an iPhone/hotmail account/whatever, or how things like FF and OpenOffice get installed in the first place. Except, unlike FF and OO, this choice will necessarily be made by every user.

    • by selven ( 1556643 )

      Not, really. IE will probably be listed as "Microsoft Internet Explorer" and people, familiar with the Microsoft name, will still go for that one.

    • That's the point. Now people who don't know what to choose will pick one at random, or ask a friend, rather than just defaulting to Internet Explorer. This prevents Microsoft from using their monopoly in the OS market to get a monopoly in the browser market (in theory).
  • by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Saturday December 05, 2009 @12:37AM (#30332928)

    ...the top five browsers -- IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Apple's Safari -- will appear in random order each time the ballot is displayed.

    Guess what! Next, the complainants will not be happy with the way the randomization code is implemented. I guess they will propose an Open Source one.

    Frankly, I cannot wait to get finished with this bickering, and besides, Firefox is not doing badly in Germany at all!

  • Sad (Score:2, Interesting)

    will appear in random order each time the ballot is displayed

    The implications of this are very saddening. That's beyond promoting competition, and just dividing up the booty.

    Why stop at browsers then? We could breath new life into the text editor market, casual picture editing market, file compression market, file browser market, music player market, etc. These ALL existed! Where are their randomized ballot windows? Hell, that's free advertising! Where do I sign up to have the VB 3 based browser I wrote in 8th grade added? We could all be using HyperMonkeyMark

    • Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mariushm ( 1022195 ) on Saturday December 05, 2009 @12:57AM (#30332994)

      How would you display them otherwise?

      By number of units sold - IE would be first as it comes with all operating systems, and they're all free now
      By the letter of the alphabet - Is it "Microsoft Internet Explorer" or "Internet Explorer", "Firefox" or "Mozilla Firefox", how soon do you think a browser called "aaaaBrowser" will appear just to appear the first
      By popularity or market share - based on who's stats... it's well known the expression here "Netcraft confirms it"

      Random really does seem the best for now, and as long as these 5 browsers are not hardcoded... though it would be interesting if Microsoft would launch "Microsoft SilverlightBrowser" or something in Windows 2010 or something like that and as it's sold with the OS there will probably be two MS browsers in first 5

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by thuerrsch ( 1442235 )
        Why not display the browser options according to their scores on the Acid3 test, in decreasing order? That would make Opera very happy and give Microsoft a strong incentive to make their product more standards-compliant.
      • > IE would be first as it comes with all operating systems...

        It most certainly does not.

      • The point is, why have the ballot in the first place? If MS wants to include a browser in their OS, let them. Nobody complains that Apple includes their own browser as a default on every mac sold. That's a monopoly, right? Only on one type of hardware, but still a monopoly. How is it fair to other browsers that only Firefox is installed by default in Ubuntu? I didn't see a ballot when I installed 9.10 the other day.

        It's seriously time to get the hell over "M$". I mean I'd rather people use Firefox, but i
        • Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly [wikipedia.org]

          Apple is not a monopoly as it barely has about 5-8% of the "desktop operating system" market. Windows with its ~ 75% is considered a monopoly.

          Apple may be considered as a monopoly for their music players (iPhone/iPod combined) if for example they make changes to their AAC decoder software and iTunes so that the AAC files you buy will only play correctly on iTunes/iPhones. As it stands now, iPod and iTunes don't have anything special that other mp3 players can't do.

          Y

    • Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gigiya ( 1022729 ) on Saturday December 05, 2009 @01:00AM (#30333002)
      Overreact much? Display is random, it's not like it randomly chooses and installs one automatically. If that's what a user does, it's their problem.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why stop at browsers then? We could breath new life into the text editor market, casual picture editing market, file compression market, file browser market, music player market, etc. These ALL existed! Where are their randomized ballot windows?

      Absolutely none of these are anywhere near as central to the average user's computer usage as the web browser is. And regardless, there's no problem with those anyway as Microsoft only packages minimally functional implementations of those programs with Windows which

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Try not to get too angry. There are so many people on here who don't have the ability to run a google search to see why MS are so unpopular and just blindly believe it's because the ungrateful Yooroes who would all be speaking Kraut if it wasn't for Uncle Sam are punishing a successful US corp for being successful.

    • by tylernt ( 581794 )

      The implications of this are very saddening. That's beyond promoting competition, and just dividing up the booty.

      Why stop at browsers then?

      The fair solution is to not have any kind of (pre-installed) browser or a ballot at all. A user is greeted with a desktop with no prompts or programs. If the user wants a web browser, they can install one from media.

      I'm assuming MS decided that was no good -- can you imagine the tech support calls that would generate? So they agreed to the next best thing, a ballot prom

      • The fair solution is to not have any kind of (pre-installed) browser or a ballot at all. A user is greeted with a desktop with no prompts or programs. If the user wants a web browser, they can install one from media.

        I would agree if Windows was a GNU/Linux distribution with some kind of free software package manager where you could emerge arora or apt-get install lynx. But it's not and (ab)using a browser seems to be the only easy way to get a browser on that OS. Get a CD/DVD sounds like a bad solution.

        They apparently wrote a "ballot" browser "package manager" and my humble opinion is that they should place it under "Internet" in the menu, not pop it up in peoples face.

    • Re:Sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday December 05, 2009 @02:36AM (#30333324) Journal

      There go my mod points...

      We could breath new life into the text editor market, casual picture editing market, file compression market, file browser market, music player market, etc.

      Do you understand why IE is a problem?

      IE bastardized the web standards it supports, and failed to support any decent new ones, for about a decade. After dropping support for other platforms, it effectively meant that many web pages were Windows-only. This was sometimes through no fault of their own, simply because they tested it with IE and assumed that worked. Sometimes it was deliberate -- why waste time supporting less than 5% of the population, when 95% can view your page?

      Only when Firefox started seriously threatening its marketshare did IE start to improve, and it has done so incredibly slowly, compared to any of its rivals.

      Yet even now, the damage has been done. To this day, if I want to be taken seriously as a web developer, I have to spend roughly 10-25% of my time hacking in support for IE6.

      To compound this problem, you do kind of need a web browser to download another web browser. So even if I wanted to make a conscious choice to use, say, Firefox, I'd have to visit the Firefox download page from IE. It isn't as though Microsoft can reasonably be expected to ship an OS without a browser, unless we leave it up to the manufacturers, as most users would not know how to use ftp at the commandline to get Firefox.

      So this is a sane solution to a real problem.

      Compare this to your other examples. It isn't as though Notepad royally screws up text -- recent versions probably even handle Unicode properly, and even if we all adopt the defacto Microsoft standard of CRLF, it's not hurting anything -- nor is there a significant monopoly problem with text editors. And if notepad isn't there, you can download something else.

      Same with casual picture editing. Download Paint.net or Gimp, and even if you don't, it's not as though there's some scandal with the png and jpeg file formats that makes them a nightmare to work with because some asshat breaks the standard every chance they get.

      File compression? Standards work, there isn't a monopoly problem, and you don't need a file compression utility to download a file compression utility.

      And so on.

      Where do I sign up to have the VB 3 based browser I wrote in 8th grade added?... GIMP/MyFirstPictureEditor

      What's the marketshare of your browser? How well does it support standards? Where's the indication that it's a legitimate choice?

      Is there any indication that Gimp is a monopoly of anything, or that it's abused that monopoly power?

      randomly populate lopsided projects like Gnome/KDE... MySQL/Postgres, vi/emacs

      Because that's so lopsided right now. Also, what standards has Gnome created that KDE breaks? They seem to cooperate pretty well. MySQL and PostgreSQL seem to both support standard SQL, and vi/emacs seem to both support Unicode well enough.

      Linux/*BSD/OpenSolaris/Hurd

      This is the only analogy that comes close to making sense -- yet all of these seem to support POSIX and X11 decently well.

      On a serious note, when has choice in Linux ever been randomized?

      When has any needed to be? Come to think of it, when has Linux, or anything currently running on Linux, ever abused monopoly power, or had a monopoly of anything to abuse?

      On a serious note, I actually think it would be a bit easier to simply force Windows to ship without a browser, and let the OEMs sort it out, but I don't have much of a problem with the "random ballot" -- other than that it's going to lead to the best marketing winning, not the best software.

      • Do you understand why IE is a problem?

        IE bastardized the web standards it supports, and failed to support any decent new ones, for about a decade. After dropping support for other platforms, it effectively meant that many web pages were Windows-only. This was sometimes through no fault of their own, simply because they tested it with IE and assumed that worked. Sometimes it was deliberate -- why waste time supporting less than 5% of the population, when 95% can view your page?

        Only when Firefox started serio

        • At the time it came out, IE6 was considerably more compliant than its main competitor, Netscape 4.

          Granted. And I'm not sure to what extent I really care about the IE-vs-Netscape legal issue -- though I do find it interesting that the DOJ dropped the case pretty much immediately after the Bush administration was elected.

          However, that was like 8 years ago.

          Right. It was about five years of IE6 before IE7 was released, and it's been about three years since then. It may be getting to where we can forget IE6 and just focus on IE7 and IE8 -- but both still break standards in weird ways, to the point where some people advocate never upgrading IE

      • This was sometimes through no fault of their own, simply because they tested it with IE and assumed that worked. Sometimes it was deliberate -- why waste time supporting less than 5% of the population, when 95% can view your page?

        Sorry, I forgot IE was the reference browser for the Internet and Microsoft failed, or wait, it wasn't, and developers only tested with IE? Who's problem was this again?

        File compression? Standards work, there isn't a monopoly problem, and you don't need a file compression utility to download a file compression utility.

        Standard file compression, which one, are you serious? ZOMG, Microsoft the monopoly is bundling file compression utilities with Windows, what about WinZip? /sarcasm.
        BTW, conveniently, all of my examples were being sold prior to being available on the Internet. Yes, I've heard there was such a time.

        Is there any indication that Gimp is a monopoly of anything, or that it's abused that monopoly power?

        Gimp isn't RedHat is!1 They are strong

    • Happy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HobophobE ( 101209 )

      The object of this ballot system is to let users know that a choice even exists. It's not to promote any specific competitor. You seem to overlook the fact that there are people out there (and quite a few, I might add) that don't know they have a choice. They don't know what a browser is. They just know they click that specific icon to get on the internet. They don't know there is an internet separate from the web. A lot of computer users have very limited knowledge.

      As to why they should know, that is

    • The EU has already dealt with the Music Player market. There are "N" variants of most of their versions of Windows which don't have Windows Media Player, allowing you to install Winamp, Real Player or whatever instead. They cost exactly the same as the versions with WMP and they have sold approximately zero copies of it in the EU.

    • Yeah, it's weird, a browser ballot screen??? Wouldn't it make much more sense if they required IE to be distributed in a way similar to the other browsers? That is, no mentioning of IE at all anywhere in Windows. Users who want it can download it somewhere. And to be able to do that, a text-only browser is in Windows created only for the purpose of downloading software.
    • Linux does not have 80+% marketshare, more like 1%: nobody cares about what they do. And they are not a convicted monopolist, so they can do whatever they want.

      Starting heavy-handed supervision with the browser makes sense, since MS's prevalence was having a very clear negative impact in terms of security, standards compliance... and even features were not up to par.

      I'm not against widening it after wards. Windows standard editor, media payer, image editing... are sorry pieces of crap. But, at least, they a

    • So, could you please tell us what is the default browser for "Linux"? Or Desktop Environment? Or text editor?

      Linux users already have to choose the distro, and there are hundreds, each with different sets of apps. And in many distros, you can install it without installing any browser.

  • As a long time Opera user, all this nonsense makes me want to just install Internet Explorer to spite the lot of them. (OK, as a web developer I know I will be installing all of them on my test computer)

    The reason I have always prefered Opera is that I get all the functionality without having to install other plug-ins and programs. I'm getting too old to just keep tinkering with my setup. In my youth I probably spent 90% of my time installing new stuff & writing programs to streamline my system and only

  • If browser selection screens are consumer friendly why doesn't Chrome OS have one?
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If browser selection screens are consumer friendly why doesn't Chrome OS have one?

      Because Google has not been convicted of illegally using Chrome OS's monopoly market share to dominate the browser market. For that to even be possible, Chrome OS would first have to achieve a monopoly.

      There's too many people in this discussion acting surprised that Microsoft is being held to a different standard. Yes, Microsoft IS being treated differently here. It's not because a bunch of Windows-haters are running the EU. It's because they are a convicted monopolist. They have already caused prob

      • It's because they are a convicted monopolist

        And part of the confusion comes from people using phrases like this. Having a monopoly is not illegal. Once you have a monopoly, however, certain things are. A legal monopoly is not the same as an economic monopoly. You don't have to have 100% of a market to have a legal monopoly, you just have to have enough that you can act as if you do. If you have a monopoly in one area, then you may not use this to gain market share in another area. This is an obvious restriction. Without it, a company that got

        • by Lulfas ( 1140109 )
          That's because it's a US company. If it was an EU company... Well, it probably wouldn't be nearly as big or profitable.
    • Because the Chrome browser is fairly standards compliant?
      What this whole thing is about is microsoft trying to use a fairly broken and proprietary version of htmtl, css and javascript to make it impossible for people to use the web without using internet explorer.
  • Mozilla at least is honest about the process - the addtional search engines are alphabetical. There's a whole boatload of them to wade through, but at least it's fair. IE8, on the other hand, chose to show the additional search engines by some unknown process, and put Google (the engine that most people would want to add) on the second page of choices, right next to unkonwn providers such as Freebase Visual Search and Findname.cn. Having a ballot of the top 5 additional search engines would be a lot bett
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 )

      IE8, on the other hand, chose to show the additional search engines by some unknown process, and put Google (the engine that most people would want to add) on the second page of choices,

      I am not sure if it was IE7 or IE8, but I found that installing an additional search provider in IE after making Firefox the default browser was impossible. Instead of opening an IE window to download and install the search provider, it opened the default browser (now FF). The one time that IE should have been hardcoded as

      • I find all kinds of times IE should be hardcoded to open, and it never is. It's an accident. IE8 asked me at install time what I wanted, in itself.

        • I find all kinds of times IE should be hardcoded to open, and it never is. It's an accident.

          What's the saying? Once is an accident, twice is coincidence and three times is enemy action.

          Remember the posting about how some poor developer spent months on Vista's shutdown button? Things like this get a lot of scrutiny at MS and don't happen by accident.

          • One time is a bug, twice is a copy and paste error, thrice is a coding convention.
  • Hypocrites. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by baboo_jackal ( 1021741 ) on Saturday December 05, 2009 @02:06AM (#30333228)
    The only possible reason that you would care about your position on a serial list of choices is if you knew that the majority of people making said choice really don't care about what they're choosing, and their choice would end up being random (i.e., primacy effect, serial position effect, google it).

    But the premise of this whole debacle is that people are not given a choice of browser when they install an OS, and that is the reason that IE has such a large market share (since it's installed by default).

    So basically, these other browser makers are fighting over how to get their browser randomly selected the most among people who don't care what browser they use. So that they can claim that their browser is used more. How does that make any sense?
    • It makes sense because those neophytes might actually try another browser. They could even end up comparing it with their friend's choice of browser to see which is coolest..

      It gives the people in the list an incentive to make a better browser ... based on what users want, not some political agenda. How's that for a radical idea??

    • Re:Hypocrites. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alef ( 605149 ) on Saturday December 05, 2009 @08:17AM (#30334422)

      But the premise of this whole debacle is that people are not given a choice of browser when they install an OS, and that is the reason that IE has such a large market share (since it's installed by default).

      The choice has always been there, albeit more complicated to make. The issue has been that Microsoft has promoted their browser through their operating system monopoly, leading to unfair competition, not that people haven't been given a choice per se.

      I personally don't think it is a big issue whether the ballot should be random or not. It sounds more like they are quibbling about details. But if the goal is to remove the leverage MS has through controlling the operating system, I'd say a random ballot ought to be more "fair" than letting MS pick the order. Sure, those who don't care will get a random browser, but why should MS be given the advantage of getting (more of) those users?

  • They will choose browsers more fairly then politicians are chosen. I would love to see randomized ballots so voting the party line actually requires some knowledge.

    People who just vote Democrat or Republican every election for all levels of government are ensuring we won't be able to get any real improvement (yes I didn't say change) in the US. Randomized ballots would make it more difficult to do, and might, make them learn a little more of who they are voting for...

  • Microsoft may offer tools for volume license customers that prevent the Ballot Screen update from being installed on all computers covered by the license.

    I'm still waiting for some confirmation on this. I do not want this thing appearing on my carefully locked down staff and lab desktops, which incidentally all use Firefox anyway in case you're thinking I'm an IE astroturfer.

  • It's probably going to be something like the Florida Voting Machine [youtube.com].

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

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