First, I would agree, if Windows 7 arrived without a browser, it would be one of the first things I installed. And, I would agree that I would install Internet Explorer 8, although it would probably come after Firefox and Chrome, but IE8 is a very good browser, certainly not the disaster that IE6 and some of the earlier ones were. Microsoft isn't dumb, they waited until IE8 was at least closer to the competition, before unbundling. Still, Firefox and Chrome are better these days, they would go on first.
But, I would not need a browser to install an initial browser, I'm sure the competition would make freely available CDs from various sources, they could be installed via ftp, etc. To say you need a browser to install a browser, is well, silly. Many manufacturers and motherboard makers would also bundle browsers, to further ease the consumers' task. The parts of the Microsoft repackaging that bother me are more that it claimed for years that the browser was such an integral part of the operating system that it could not be separated out. That clearly was and is a false, monopolistic, anti-competitive claim, and while in general we don't want the governments involved too much in technical matters, the playing field here needed to be level.
But is unbundling sufficient? Not really, Microsoft for updates and other tasks has very heavily tied to IE proprietary features, many unpublished or non-standard, it purposefully does things in a non-standard but moving-target sort of way. That wouldn't be necessarily bad, but if you're a monopoly, it's a higher standard that you need to meet, you must play fairly. Not installing but making available for free IE8 would ironically still be monopolistic, to be fair to the competition, Microsoft should probably have to further unbundle, charging for IE8 enough so that it wasn't losing money, or divesting the browser part of the company so that there was not unfair leverage. All of the Microsoft websites should not have proprietary tie-ins, should work with other browsers. And the same for Windows servers. And there is the matter of what to do about damages, as there are some companies, Netscape, Opera, etc., that are going, once the decisions area reached, to potentially be in line for further damages and judgments. All of this might raise the cost of a PC we bought by $5 or $10, but in the long run its not a bad price to pay, if it results in more competition, a leveled playing field, the browsers would get suddenly much better, and the costs would come back down, probably even lower eventually.
I'm a little surprised to see this up on Tom's Hardware. Usually it has a higher standard for accuracy and completeness in its articles and views.
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