[citation][nom]josh jones[/nom]@SAL-e you seem to know about this case. why is that?[/citation]
Well, because I always strive to be the “Top Dog” in my field of expertise. For several years now I have realized that I have to expend not only in technical field, but in other areas like Politics, Economics and Legal, especially in Intellectual Monopolies (a.k.a. IP).
[citation][nom]josh jones[/nom]did you forget that Firefox has majority market share.[/citation]
I know that Firefox has the biggest share of the browser market right now, but I will address it in the minute why is that.
[citation][nom]josh jones[/nom]EU seems to bully these companies for financial gain. as far as i'm concerned, the EU is nothing more than a parasite, (tape worm, leech, etc)..nice to know the EU has ways to offset costs, but it's too bad it's at the expense of others.[/citation]
You are entitled for your opinion about EU and in some cases I have my gripes with EU my self. I have the same gripes with the US Congress. I think US Congress and EU Commission some time forget that they exist to represent the people not the industry lobbyist. But this is subject for other time on other site I believe.
Thank you for pointing out to me that not everyone knows the roots of the current case. I think I will try to share my understanding, but I have to make several disclaimers first:
1. I am holding dual citizenship from countries on the both sides of the ocean. So I have understanding of both points of view: American and EU. So I believe that could be fairly natural.
2. My current understanding is based on fuzzy memory and has a lot of blank spots. Very serious research is needed to confirm or reject my point of view, so please take it with big grain of salt.
This case is the tip of the iceberg of the browser war that started long time ago. In order to understand why we are here today we need to go back in time. The time before the Internet became part of every day life. At that time Windows was undisputed king of the desktop. Any new software company in order to succeed had to develop for Windows and for Windows platform only. At that time Microsoft strategy was to watch for new companies and if some new technology becomes attractive they had very easy solution. Once the new company has been notice by MS there were only two paths for it:
1. Accept the takeover offer from MS, which always was significantly lower then there real value. Or
2. If the company refuses, MS was putting their power and quickly develop complementary product or technology and bundle it with Windows and effectively putting the rebel company out of business.
MS was able to do this because they had monopoly on the desktop and had unchallenged control over the market. Unfortunately for MS the market can not be controlled for very long. MS’s strategy created situation in which venture capitalist did not wanted to invest in business that is dependent on Windows platform any more. Also all failed companies left number of patents that now is primary fuel used by Patent Trolls that are going after MS and other rich corporations.
As result all venture capital moved to the new frontier called Internet. Over night all kind of businesses started popping up on the Internet. It was like gold rush and very soon it became one big bubble that finally burst in the end of 2000. After that we were left with a lot of unused server and communication capacity, cheep venture capital that was staying away from Windows platform. The result is the new trend Software as Service (SaS) where the browser is a key component and Microsoft was having an upper hand after IE successfully displaced Netscape. That was around 2003. MS was in total control.
At the same time small company in Oslo had the guts to go after the sweetest peace of the pie. This company is Opera Software and their browser Opera. Of course this did not went unnoticed by Microsoft and they started protecting their platform by introducing automatic check for browser version and vendor when you build web application with MS tools. Those checks were primarily targeted against Opera, but not Netscape and new Mozilla because by that time MS was having antitrust problems within EU and US about the Netscape war and Samba. So Opera was forced to implement a feature that allow the Opera browser to present it self as IE. Microsoft was not happy at all. They try to bully Opera, but Opera did not backup.
While the war between MS and Opera was going on the Google was growing like a wiled fire. Very soon they had so much cash that they did not know what to do with it. They decided to expand by providing complementary services for MS products like Office. From the beginning they knew that can not rely on MS’s IE and they did not want to depend on other proprietary browser like Opera. They had great success using Linux and other Free Open Source Software (FOSS) so they made the deal with Mozilla and that is why Firefox is the Top browser today. Personally I think that was the biggest mistake that MS has done. They were laughing at FOSS and Linux in general. Bill and Steve were making jokes about it.
The war between Opera and MS was like the cold war during the 2003-2007, but finally become hot when in 2007 MSN.com redesigned their site to recognize Opera browser even if it was pretending to be IE and refuse to serve pages to Opera users. Opera response was to issue a patch that was replacing any MS content on the Internet like logos, advertisements or text with funny text or anti Microsoft logos. This became central news and Microsoft had to backup quickly. But Opera new that MS is death serious to put them out of business so in December 2007 they file complain with EU Commission. Google was having trouble making their services working with IE and some time the Google sites were broken after IE updates. So Google was the second company to join the Opera and shortly after that Mozilla.
One of the orders of EU Commission after the Netscape case was that MS to allow removal of the IE. MS used a loophole in the final language and only removed the shortcut not the browser. EU Commission fined MS for that, but they are not very happy with companies that are ignoring their orders. That is why MS is in the hot seat right now.
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