What? Opera stopped charging for their browser several years ago, and even back then offered it free if you accepted an ad banner.
If you can’t even get that straight I don’t think you should talk about Opera’s business model. As for the product it has always been superior to IE and has constantly been a source of innovation and ease of use.
Who would use a browser with an ad banner if all the other browsers don’t have one?
Well, I did, so I could use features like tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, and page zoom that didn’t lead to massive-h-scrolling long before they were commonplace.
Ditto
I used to use Opera. It used to be the only browser with mouse gestures, and the smallest and fastest browser too.
Now that other browsers have caught up to and surpassed them, they’ve turned into whiny bitches.
MS’s Monopoly in the OS and Internet…well I don’t consider it a monopoly anymore. Apple, Linux, and Firefox have all taken large chunks away from Microsoft.
You don’t consider Microsoft’s >90% market share in the OS market a monopoly?
Copy and paste the headline into Google, click on it, profit. (Or at least read the article)
It is presumably imperfect, but nevertheless: Wiki article on browser market share. According to Net Applications & TheCounter.com, in four years (Q2 2005 to Q2 2009) IE has lost over 20% of the usage pie, mostly to Firefox and Safari. Others show different percentages, but the general trend seems to be consistent: IE goes down, FF & Safari go up. Interestingly, Chrome already has over twice the usage of Opera, which has never even hit the 1% mark.
Turns out the WSJ article was correct in not mentioning Windows versions: Microsoft to offer ballot screens retroactively via Windows Update for European users of XP and Vista.
Unbelievably, Opera is whining about the inclusion of browser icons which they claim confers an unfair advantage on IE. STFU already, losers.
WSJ really is the pinnacle of journalism. No need to fact check them. ;)
But yea, Opera is extremely annoying. Their sole reason of existing is to annoy Microsoft. Looking at the screen, I imagine that the biggest beneficiary (in terms of getting IE users who use it because they don’t know of alternatives) is Google because they have a big and familiar logo.
The notion behind the “no browser” OS was that you could just use Windows Update to get IE8.
to properly appreciate the viewpoint one must arrive at the perspective in which MS is much more than the primary engine powering one’s career (altho true in some cases), it literally manufactures the airplanes in which one provides in-flight entertainment.
And when there are guys who won’t stop talking about how standardization and uniformity are good and building the audience is the holy grail, certain receptors in one’s receiver are finding the creamy goodness of the transmission, the meaty thrust of the message, most sublime, inexpressibly right and just, in a thouroughgoing manner.
And what exactly does Paul Thurrott say in his characteristically pointless essay? I’m not sure he was saying anything.
I’m not sure how he arrived at the conclusion that it’s a bad precedent, but there you go - Paul’s point.
Agreed, my thoughts are because everyone just loves to pick on the 800 pound gorilla because it’s an easy target.
Eh, I could see why he’s worked up about it (I was surprised too) but I don’t think Microsoft is going to lose much marketshare. Tons of people have only heard of (or use) IE and they’ll keep choosing it.
I don’t think it’ll affect precedent much. 66% marketshare is a rather high threshold.
One of the differences between Apple and Microsoft is that Microsoft have been found guilty of abusing their position in the marketplace while Apple haven’t. The EU isn’t looking at whether or not Microsoft is currently abusing that monopoly either; their ‘take’ is that MS have abused their monopolistic position in the past and are therefore likely to do so again.
Remember that monopolies aren’t inherently wrong or unlawful or whatever; anti-trust issues only arise when the monopoly is being abused in order to prevent competition or to ensure dominance in another market. In the case of Internet Explorer, MS used their Operating System leverage to make Internet Explorer the dominant browser and then used that as leverage in the web server space. This is less of an issue these days because Java(script) and Flash have turned out to be more enduring and widespread than Microsoft’s own equivalents and Firefox occupies a large enough niche in the browser market that web developers are pretty much forced to ensure compatibility with other browsers. But, as I said earlier, the EU isn’t just concerned about whether or not MS are abusing their position now.
Comparisons to Apple aren’t entirely apt anyway, at least in this instance; sure, Apple bundle a browser with their OS but that browser is based on an open-source rendering engine, is developed with standards compliance in mind and anyway Apple’s web server of choice is Apache - itself an open source product so the charge that Apple might use Safari’s inclusion in OSX to leverage the web server space doesn’t really wash.
Whether or not Apple have an abusive monopoly in the PMP/online music distribution space is open to debate but they haven’t been found guilty of that particular activity and as far as I know no-one is chasing them about it either.
Yes. Yes, the entire reason monopoly law exists is because monopolies are such easy targets.