Windows 7: Microsoft changes algorithm behind its browser ballot.

Microsoft has tweaked the algorithm generating the browser choice screen that it is pushing out to European Union users as a result of the European Commission’s findings in an antitrust case there.

Shortly after Microsoft began pushing the browser ballot to Windows users in the EC who have Internet Explorer installed as their default browser (on March 1), various parties began complaining about it.

Some of the browser vendors whose products were on page 2 of the ballot were unhappy they weren’t on page one. IBMer Rob Weir — a vocal critic of Microsoft’s during the OpenDoc vs. Open Document Format standards battles — said he’d found that the ballot wasn’t actually generating random results, as it was supposed to do. Microsoft was planning to list the top browsers by market share in alphabetical order by vendor, but after push back from some of its competitors, scrapped that plan in favor of an algorithm-generated random listing.