Windows 7 to be shipped in Europe sans IE

Legacy Code said:

Would you be kind enough to elaborate on that statement please , as I'm curious as to whats about to happen.

Thanks

From BBC NEWS | Business | EU slaps a record fine on Intel

"Computer chipmaker Intel has been fined a record 1.06bn euros ($1.45bn; £948m) by the European Commission for anti-competitive practices.
It dwarfs the 497m euro fine levied on Microsoft in 2004 for abusing its dominant market position."


PhreePhly

digitalrurouni said:

I think it is a silly ruling from the EU...sometimes I just wonder if they are run by monkeys.

On the other hand and I pose this question to the knowledgeable members of this forum...why dont they go after OS X with their Safari 4? Is it simply because Microsoft is HUGE?

Simple answer is that Apple is not a monopoly. It's not the MS is Huge, it's that MS is a monopoly, and for them, rules are different. This is the same in the US. It's not illegal to be a monopoly, but it places you in a position to be scrutinzed. You cannot use that dominant position to stifle competition. If you do, you will get slapped.

I'm not sure that a real argument can be made that including IE is abusing your monopoly position, but if the Commisison decides it is, MS must conform. I think that MS used this opportunity to thumb their noses at the EU.

PhreePhly

digitalrurouni said:

I think it is a silly ruling from the EU...sometimes I just wonder if they are run by monkeys.

Perhaps if the EU was run by monkeys you would get more sense out of it. I don't think that monkeys would stoop so low and spout so many rules and regulations, all (or at least a good proportion) are totally unnecessary and certainly not wanted by a good many people.

Apologies for those who might think that it is an insult to monkeys by referring to them in this manner. It is completely unintentional.

Legacy Code said:

What are they doing so wrong tho ? Apart from making massive amounts of money, selling the best stuff going. Lets face it we all love windows , else we wouldn't be here in this forum.

Does anyone here run a business ? ...... The first rule of business is to make money and they do it oh so well. These fines are like a parking ticket to them.

They became a monopoly. Like I said above, they did it (Gates did it) by having an uncanny perception of where the fledgling computer market was going early on. I believe Gates envisioned every office worker having access to their own desktop computer. You must realize that early on, this was not the general view. A time-shared mainframe was the office computer and a few people had access to terminals. Secretaries typed reports on typewriters and engineers performed hand calcs or got terminal time on the mainframe. That was the norm.

Gates saw huge opportunity in cheaper (relatively, still expensive in actual dollars) computers with a standard interface. So did Jobs, ironically. In the early days, having a mix of PC and Mac was not uncommon. PC's were used for running calculations and large spreadsheets, and the macs were used by the secretaries for typing reports, etc. Where I worked, we added Unix workstations for simulation work.

When Windows 3.0 was introduced, PC's began hitting a price point where most of an office could get individual PCs. Windows became the defacto standard and soon, Windows was on 95%+ computers. At that point MS became a monopoly. Nothing wrong with that. That was the result of being smart, but then MS began using that monopoly position to force OEMs to only pre-load Windows. They did this by giving these builders HUGE discounts for a Windows license, but that discount was based on 99% of the systems sold having Windows as the OS.

There are some that claim MS added "undocumented" API calls Word, which gave it a huge display advantage in the Office arena. This lead to the fairly quick death of Word Perfect. Others claimed that by bundling IE with Windows, this forced the death of Netscape. (Those folks also forget how bad Netscape was, and how good IE was at that time.)

There are many more examples of abuse, just google MS monopoly, and I'm sure you'll find much more. Read what you find with a grain of salt, the Slashdot crowd tends to blow things out of proportion, but many of the abuse claims are real.

By abusing their position, MS put themselves in the sights of the US Gov as well as the EU commision.

This same thing happened with telephones in the US, Oil in the US, and in those cases, the Monopoly company was forced to split into separate companies. These companies were restricted in how they could interact with one another, and later became competitors. There was talk of forcing MS to split, OS, Business software (Office, etc), and Server. This never went anywhere, mut that would have been interesting. The computing landscape would certainly be different.

PhreePhly

From the horses mouth - official Microsoft Statement

Working to Fulfill our Legal Obligations in Europe for Windows 7 - Microsoft On The Issues

UPDATE: June 11, 2009 – 5:30 p.m. Pacific
Posted by Dave Heiner
Vice President and Deputy General Counsel


Earlier today CNET reported that Microsoft had sent a memo to computer manufacturers and retailers about our plans for Windows 7 in Europe. We’re getting quite a few calls on this, so we thought it would be helpful to explain our plans.
First, a little context. For the past three years Microsoft has been working to develop the next version of our Windows operating system, Windows 7. We’ve taken feedback from literally millions of beta customers to ensure that Windows 7 delivers the power, simplicity and ease-of-use that customers want. We’ve also worked hard to ensure that Windows 7 will promote choice and competition in the computer industry, in keeping with our Windows Principles. We’ve held hands-on workshops with hundreds of industry partners to ensure they have the information they need to build products that work well with Windows 7. Customers running Windows 7 will be able to choose compatible products from among literally thousands of computer manufacturers, peripheral manufacturers, and software vendors.
The worldwide launch of Windows 7 is fast approaching, but a pending legal case raises concerns about the sufficiency of competition among the Web browsers that are available to Windows users in Europe. In January the European Commission provided its preliminary view that Microsoft’s “bundling” of Internet Explorer in Windows violated European competition law.

This update contains a history of Microsoft's fun and games with anti-trust

Microsoft seems to have had another bombshell to drop with the concept of having a menu of choices of which browser to use as the alternative to seeing nothing at all.

"Our decision to only offer IE separately from Windows 7 in Europe cannot, of course, preclude the possibility of alternative approaches emerging through Commission processes," Heiner wrote. "Other alternatives have been raised in the Commission proceedings, including possible inclusion in Windows 7 of alternative browsers or a 'ballot screen' that would prompt users to choose from a specific set of Web browsers."

Microsoft said it wouldn't have been right for it to adopt such an approach on its own. "Important details of these approaches would need to be worked out in coordination with the Commission, since they would have a significant impact on computer manufacturers and Web browser vendors, whose interests may differ," Heiner wrote. "Given the complexity and competing interests, we don't believe it would be best for us to adopt such an approach unilaterally."
Europe to get Windows 7 sans browser | Beyond Binary - CNET News