Microsoft Decides No IE with Win 7 in Europe

[tipmen]

Nice? so lets just have MS no allowed to have anything even if its part of the OS. How hard is it to get on IE8 and get firefox or any other browser and make it your default? i hope apple gets hit with this shit too

 

[Guest]

hmm, credit crisis, recession, huge unemployment and dwindling government finances and the EU are worried about an internet browser. This shows what kind of idiots make laws.

 

[lonewarder]

FYI: No you CAN'T uninstall internet explorer. I tried. Thanks.

 

[lonewarder]

Have you read the latest? -MS decided to comply by shipping with no browser and letting the PC builder decide; the EU said they would rather that Windows offered multiple choices at initial internet startup. They want MS to include software from their direct competition free of charge! Those guys areidiots. Jesus.

 

[misiu_mp]

[citation][nom]nachowarrior[/nom]quick question... oem version, how the fu*k do you download a browser without a browser? hahaha.[/citation]

using wget - its a small command-line web-downloader program that can be easily distributed with any OS (single executable, some kb in size).
usage:
wget [url to any file out there]

So no problem here...

 

[mrmez]

Again.... whats next?
No email
No text editor
No ms paint
No media player

All these have 3rd party competitors.

Using a mac makes more sense every day.

 

[Guest]

Hahahaha! M$ just pwnd the EU. Since W7 wont include IE, OEMs would have to "pay" M$ to distribute and pre-install IE on W7. So before all this, IE was free. Now M$ will be making money from the OEMs wanting to include it on their systems. What a brilliant strategy! And guess which of the browsers will the OEMs pre-install as the default? Which one will be familiar to 85% of their customers?

 

[mitch074]

Original complaint: Opera software complained to the EC that Microsoft used its monopoly position to force its browser on consumers, hurting competition in the browser space.

William Gates III swore in front of the US Congress that IE was a component necessary to the OS' stability. Technical proof appeared since then showing he was crossing his fingers behind his back when saying this.

A browser is made of a GUI (history, favorites, accelerators, etc.), a network component, an HTML interpreter and renderer, and a scripting engine. Removing the browser can be done by removing the GUI (what is done in Win7) and network component (not clear on that).

To make the summon irrelevant, MS would thus have:
- to not be a monopoly anymore (fat chance)
- to un-bundle IE.

Due to the debacle of XP 'N', the EC proposed a compensation (a ballot screen) so as not to reduce OEM and consumer friendliness.

Said ballot screen is NOT a browser; it links to Internet addresses that would, then, allow the user to download (using the ftp client shipped with Windows, or curl, or wget, or a clone) and install a browser of his/her choice - including IE. A slightly more sophisticated system would then be a small application that would download an XML file containing up to date descriptions, addresses, and security signatures for browser downloads.

Note that an OEM could point the ballot screen to branded versions of some of these browsers.

Easy: one click, you get your preferred browser (or several of them). Practical: it's always up to date. Safe: latest browser versions contain security fixes, and downloads can be signed.

But Microsoft decided to give consumers the shaft instead - they very well know that users will be pissed off at hardware vendors for not shipping browsers, OEMs that will then point the finger at the EC. and then install IE anyway.

A few OEMs (Dell, maybe) MIGHT add a ballot screen of their own - linking to branded versions of some of these browsers (Firefox is theme-able, IE has a friggin' OEM theme toolkit)

And more knowledgeable users, who know that IE is a security hazard and who will gladly get an IE-less Win7 and install Firefox or Opera on it, so as to reduce how much headache supporting their relatives and friends will create, won't be heard over the din.

I, for one, fondly remember the time when I could have only Netscape Navigator installed instead of IE on Win95, and not having to deal with updating both - like I need to do with my XP machines now: even though I use Firefox, I need to install and update IE because it can still be started by, say, MSN Live Bing Windows Passport Messenger (tm) - what's the name for this thing now, BTW? - when I click on a link in it even though Firefox is the only application registered for handling http:// resources.

 

[Guest]

The ruling was delivered because Microsoft playing the browser monopoly through its Windows monopoly.
Now Microsoft can't monopolize browser anymore - their IE is way way behind Firefox.
The EU ruling had been successfully make the browser market competitive and creative again.

 

[sentico]

"using wget - its a small command-line web-downloader program that can be easily distributed with any OS (single executable, some kb in size).
usage:
wget [url to any file out there]

So no problem here... "

I'm sorry, you expect Grandma to start using command line?

 

[sentico]

[citation][nom]misiu_mp[/nom]using wget - its a small command-line web-downloader program that can be easily distributed with any OS (single executable, some kb in size). usage:wget [url to any file out there]So no problem here...[/citation]


...and let alone know the URL of the file to download? (assuming the location doesn't change...which probably will over the links lifetime)