Windows 7 to ship without a web browser in Europe

[DanS]

Asher: Rather than go through the list one by one, I think we should use the following global criteria.

1) Was the functionality created before Microsoft gained an OS monopoly? Paint, Wordpad, etc. were all done well before Microsoft gained an OS monopoly.

2) Is the addition really a fix for the shortcomings of the OS rather than added functionality? Defrag, anti-spyware and a firewall strike me as falling under this category.

Most of that list you gave are OK for Microsoft to include, IMO. Really, Microsoft should be broken up, but it might not be practical to break the OS business into parts.

The focus on the media player and browser is entirely understandable. While Microsoft was a monopoly, it used its market power to marginalize competitors in these two areas.

[DanS]

DanS, this isn't "strict enforcement of the law". This is "we get to make up whatever remedy we want".

The remedy mechanics that the Europeans use is baffling, I have to admit, even though I may agree with some/most of the remedies and recognize that the gov't can basically do what it wishes with monopoly. I was more talking about a vigorous/strict identification of monopolies according to the law and trying to correct for their existence. The Euros have a very mixed record on this sort of stuff. They aren't aggressive at cleaning up other ills of a market economy, such as collusion, price-fixing, for instance.

I'm really surprised at the pushback here. Do y'all want to go back to the days of cartels? A bunch of Ma Bells running our economy? You will find a ton of economists who will happily describe to you the efficiency gained in having big players crush little players. Be skeptical, at least a little.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm really surprised at the pushback here. Do y'all want to go back to the days of cartels? A bunch of Ma Bells running our economy?

Sure.

Until the day that the Ma Bell collapses because it's sat on its ass too long.

coughGMcough

[Dinner]

Technically it was broken up several decades before it collapsed.

[Colon™]

The Euros have a very mixed record on this sort of stuff. They aren't aggressive at cleaning up other ills of a market economy, such as collusion, price-fixing, for instance.

Why do you believe the Commission is soft in those areas? It has routinely been punishing companies for price fixing:
- €273 million for a beer cartel (in which Heineken alone was fined €219 million)
- €750 million for a electrical equipment cartel (in which Siemens was fined €396 million)
- €850 for a vitamin cartel (in which Hoffman-La Roche was fined €462 million and BASF €296 million)
- nearly a billion euros in a case regarding lifts (in which ThyssenKrupp was fined €480 million)

Aside of that I agree with you though. Over the whole the strict enforcement of competition rules has been a force for the good. You can't throw that away because there's one instance in which the result is inconvenient (but hardly unsurmountable). MS also has an unnerving habbit of pushing things until the hammer is inevitably brought down on it and the company hardly deserves sympathy for it.

[Asher]

Asher: Rather than go through the list one by one, I think we should use the following global criteria.

1) Was the functionality created before Microsoft gained an OS monopoly? Paint, Wordpad, etc. were all done well before Microsoft gained an OS monopoly.

Not true at all. For example, Norton Commander was a de facto standard before Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer killed the (non-free) file explorer market by including a file manager out of the box. It's the exact same thing with the web browser. Before IE, you had to pay for Netscape. MS started bundling IE and now web browsers -- like file managers -- are free.

I have a hard time seeing the harm to consumers by both of these actions.

2) Is the addition really a fix for the shortcomings of the OS rather than added functionality? Defrag, anti-spyware and a firewall strike me as falling under this category.

Then you don't know what they are. None of these are shortcomings of the OS, that's nonsensical. Any program can be spyware. Any program can abuse network connectivity. Defragging is not essential to the OS in modern NTFS systems but power-users still enjoy being able to do it. But the point is -- all of these tools MS bundles for free with Windows used to be software products from other vendors consumers paid money for. That market is pretty much dead now, but no one seems to be complaining?

Most of that list you gave are OK for Microsoft to include, IMO. Really, Microsoft should be broken up, but it might not be practical to break the OS business into parts.

Gee, it "might not be"?

The focus on the media player and browser is entirely understandable. While Microsoft was a monopoly, it used its market power to marginalize competitors in these two areas.

What competitors? Who got marginalized? Netscape -- who is up to over 20% marketshare now and rising (via Firefox)? Apple, whose Safari browser has usage that only goes up? Google, whose Chrome browser is similarly rising in marketshare? All at the expense of IE?

The fact is, IE is a very basic browser just like how MS Paint is a basic paint program and wordpad is a basic text editor. The sad reality is, for many years it was the best browser out there. Netscape sucked, Opera was hilariously bad and paid software, and no one else really competed. As a result, IE's marketshare rose dramatically over those years.

At the time, I insisted if someone made a better browser, they'd have no problem stealing the marketshare back. The problem wasn't abuse by MS, it was the lack of REAL COMPETITION which was the problem of MS' competitors more than MS itself. Now that there's real competition, lo and behold, IE marketshare is plummeting and it's still bundled with the OS.

The problem with the legal system in this case is the rampant ignorance of the market and technical issues by the people making these judgments. It's easy for the ignorant to assume that because IE was bundled, it killed its competitors. You guys need to realize the state of the competition was brutally bad at the time, and that the current market is demonstrating that the browser market is still highly competitive.

There's no point to this ruling aside from dick-waving by a belittled and insignificant EU.

[Aeson]

So you agree, then, that MS should promptly remove from Windows 7 for its release in Europe the following components:

I'd be quite happy if all of the following (and much else) were optional installs on the same disk. You could even have a "standard" and "custom" installation. It could save me some time having to remove/disable much of the unnecessary crap (for me) that comes with a windows installation

[DanS]

Not true at all. For example, Norton Commander was a de facto standard before Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer killed the (non-free) file explorer market by including a file manager out of the box.

Norton Commander (and what came before it) was marginalized in large part before Microsoft gained a monopoly. It's fine to compete with sharp elbows if you're not a monopoly.

[Asher]

Norton Commander (and what came before it) was marginalized in large part before Microsoft gained a monopoly.

What was the magical monopoly date, Dan?

[DanS]

Microsoft was judged a monopoly in early November '99.

[Asher]

Microsoft was judged a monopoly in early December '98.

So they did not have the absurdly dominant desktop OS before then?

It's becoming increasingly clear to me, Dan, that you've lost a practical viewpoint on the matter and instead are steeped in legalese.

In 1997, for instance, MS had a marketshare of 88.6%.

MacOS at 4.6%, Linux at 2.4%, Unix at 1%, OS/2 at 0.8% and other at 2.7%.

How is that not a monopoly, if MS has one today?

[DanS]

I cross-edited you. No, they had a dominant desktop before then, but November '99 is the only easily identified "magic date" for monopoly.

[Asher]

I cross-edited you. No, they had a dominant desktop before then, but November '99 is the only easily identified "magic date" for monopoly.

But that is not relevant to the discussion. We're talking about how MS bundling applications with the dominant OS is killing its competition. A perfect and directly comparable example is how MS killed the file browser market by bundling a file browser with Windows, while it was an equally dominant OS back then as it is now.

I do not care about when the US government randomly decided to declare it a monopoly. I live in reality and I emphasize practicality -- how are the two situations different?

If Internet Explorer killed the for-pay internet browser market and Windows Explorer killed the for-pay file browser market, why are people fixated on IE only?

Hint: It has to do with a company called Opera.

[DanS]

When in your view was Norton Commander/precedents marginalized?

[Asher]

When in your view was Norton Commander/precedents marginalized?

As soon as Windows 95 shipped with Windows Explorer.

[DanS]

And what was Microsoft's market share for Windows 3.1/3.11?

Edit: I recall that there was something akin to file explorer in 3.1/3.11.

[Asher]

And what was Microsoft's market share for Windows 3.1/3.11?

Not sure, but it's safe to say as someone who used computers back in the day that the combination of DOS + Windows 3.1 were dominant OSes.

Edit: I recall that there was something akin to file explorer in 3.1/3.11.

Yes, there was something similar. But it was very limited compared to Windows Explorer and Norton Commander. Commander still was more useful until Windows Explorer came out. People stopped buying Commander after they got Windows 95 with Windows Explorer.

The only reason IE is getting picked on is because Opera has incessantly been whining to the EU since 2001 about IE being bundled. Rather than pay developers to make a competitive and competent OS, they're paying an army of lawyers to file complaints and try to bully MS to bundling Opera with Windows. Even now, after MS has ceased bundling IE in Europe, they're still not happy. And because Opera is not happy, the EU is still going ahead with their case against MS for bundling IE. Why? Because Opera thinks it's not fair until Opera is installed with Windows.

This is not at all about consumer fairness or market competition, it's about Opera trying to increase their marketshare through bundling themselves since the merits of their product are, demonstrably, not enough to let them gain marketshare. They've had pathetic marketshare for years while their competitors gain ground at rapid paces.

[-Jrabbit]

Netscape -- who is up to over 20% marketshare now and rising (via Firefox)
Apple, whose Safari browser has usage that only goes up
Google, whose Chrome browser is similarly rising in marketshare

Why doesn't MS just load up all these free browsers with the new OS (along with Explorer, of course) and be done with it? Hell, if they did that, the EU would probably even let them make Explorer the default.

[DanS]

Not sure, but it's safe to say as someone who used computers back in the day that the combination of DOS + Windows 3.1 were dominant OSes.

I think that we need data on this. Like you, I remember that DOS + Windows 3.1 were very popular, but that there may have been OSes from the 80s that were still hanging on well into the early 90s -- f.e., DOS naked.

Regardless, even though I'm interested in the facts in the early 90s, this doesn't help Microsoft's case. It would just be another instance of Microsoft abusing monopoly power.

[-Jrabbit]

Personally, I think that the issue at hand -- browser bundling in Europe -- is a pretty pathetic attempt at browbeating by the EU. bundling your own browser with your OS (if you make both) is merely logical and convenient. It's also common practice (see Apple).

And since browsers are all free, the concept of monopolism shouldn't even be a consideration.

The EU is stupid and power-drunk over the billion-plus in fines they've levied. IMHO. (Of course, MS is certainly guilty of baiting them with the no-browser proposal.)

[Asher]

Why doesn't MS just load up all these free browsers with the new OS (along with Explorer, of course) and be done with it? Hell, if they did that, the EU would probably even let them make Explorer the default.

Because there are legal problems to distributing code you do not own. Further still, there's licensing issues. I'm not sure if MS would legally even be allowed to distribute many of the open source browsers due to their restrictive licensing schemes. Then there's the practical purposes of it -- if MS includes other people's programs, they're going to get contacted for tech support from consumers. You install Firefox in Windows by selecting "I want Firefox" or whatever in the install, then you have issues with it -- who do you call? Most would call MS.

Then there's the ability to keep it up to date. Let's say MS bundles Safari with Windows. How does Safari update itself? "Apple Software Update". But Apple Software Update does more than simply update Safari, by default it also downloads and installs Quicktime, iTunes, Bonjour, MobileMe support, etc.

By bundling software they do not make or control, they open themselves up to further exploits. Let's say they bundle Firefox. They either take a snapshot of the current version (3.0.11) and include that, but then Mozilla could use the Firefox update mechanism (which will assuredly be called very quickly after install) to bootstrap other installers. It would be trivial for Mozilla to install Thunderbird and Songbird and even make them default media players if MS bundles Firefox with Windows.

So, in short, there's MANY issues with this:
- Legal issues (over one hundred countries have different laws regarding software distribution that'd need to be checked -- MS may be responsible for the code they ship with the product, which includes code they do not own or have not seen if they ship other people's products)
- Licensing issues (Could MS ship a GPL-licensed product with their commercial software? That's a potential minefield)
- Security issues (Would MS be responsible for keeping all these browsers up to date with security issues? It's a logical next-step for the EU to demand Microsoft Update support all programs installed with Windows to keep them up to date. Another can of worms).
- Etiquette issues (Apple has already shown it's willing to exploit its update mechanisms to push its software like Safari on Windows computers, this would be trivial to do for any browser included with Windows during the install)
- Customer confusion (They installed Firefox during the Windows install, so if it breaks you call the Windows people...)

[Sir Og]

I think what killed norton commander was the casual user's adoption of the mouse interface. Not the fact that at some point WE became better. (You could argue that WE was better than NC for people using the mouse as primary interface, but that does not mean that it is a better tool overall)

[Asher]

I think what killed norton commander was the casual user's adoption of the mouse interface. Not the fact that at some point WE became better. (You could argue that WE was better than NC for people using the mouse as primary interface, but that does not mean that it is a better tool overall)

Norton Commander released a couple versions for Windows as well that had GUI support.

[Sir Og]

Norton Commander released a couple versions for Windows as well that had GUI support.

So you are saying that these versions were inferior to WE and that is why people stopped using NC?

As far as I remember WE has always been mouse interface oriented while NC has been keyboard interface oriented. When the majority of users became comfortable with copping files and folders using the mouse they stopped bothering with other file browsers and stuck with WE.

WE was always around it is not like it appeared at some point and became better then NC and people stopped using NC.

[Asher]

So you are saying that these versions were inferior to WE and that is why people stopped using NC?

As far as I remember WE has always been mouse interface oriented while NC has been keyboard interface oriented. When the majority of users became comfortable with copping files and folders using the mouse they stopped bothering with other file browsers and stuck with WE.

WE was always around it is not like it appeared at some point and became better then NC and people stopped using NC.

Windows Explorer debuted in Windows 95

[-Jrabbit]

Asher -- nice explanation, very comprehensive. Thanks.

So why not include IE with an opening screen that provides links to the alternatives?

[Sir Og]

Windows Explorer debuted in Windows 95

It was called file manager before that but it was the same thing.



How is this any different from WE from a casual user's POV?

[Asher]

It was called file manager before that but it was the same thing.



How is this any different from WE from a casual user's POV?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Explorer

One word: Spatial

[Asher]

Asher -- nice explanation, very comprehensive. Thanks.

So why not include IE with an opening screen that provides links to the alternatives?

Because they're still bundling and installing IE. That's EU is demanding only people who ask for IE get IE.

So it would be an install-time choice. The Windows Installer would either be bundled with a plethora of web browsers to choose from, or it'll connect to predefined servers and download the browsers and install. That's why it's messy.

[DanS]

And since browsers are all free, the concept of monopolism shouldn't even be a consideration.

Many believe that the browser is becoming the operating system. That seems to be why Microsoft released IE in the first place -- to kill that movement.