

Deal forcing Microsoft to offer browser choices ends - jessecred
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30501518

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maaaats
I'm almost equally scared of the Chrome dominance now as I was for IE6.

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kalleboo
I'm far less afraid since Chrome users actually get updates to their browser.

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Thaxll
Dominance is always bad even if the product is good. ( look at Steam )

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mahouse
Not sure what to say -- Steam is horribly slow, as it is Firefox.

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cLeEOGPw
He was not talking about speed, but about up to date features and treatment of
customers.

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Igglyboo
Steam has terrible customer service, Origin's is far better.

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humpt
I remember seeing this on TV and not understanding why microsoft was
threatened with a fine if they ship IE by default on their products.

Actually I still don't. Nobody ever stopped me from downloading another
browser on windows, anyone who wants to do it will do it. So people did have a
choice, they just didn't know they had it, and it's their problem, not
microsoft's!

Could someone explain this to me?

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drzaiusapelord
The EU just followed what the US courts said during Clinton. Clinton turned MS
into a whipping boy.

In retrospect, the courts were wrong. Netscape's profit model made no sense.
People didn't want to pay for commodity software like a web browser. MS had
every right to release a free one bundled with their platform. The web isn't
some optional thing. A browser is part of every OS now.

On top of it, the deal MS signed didn't let it control OEMs so that laptop
that's full of shitware that slows Windows down and gives it a huge attack
surface is not something MS could fight until recently with Win8. The
government empowered OEMs.

The Netscape/MS fight wasn't worth it. The government should never have
stepped in. In the end the best product wins. I, and everyone I know, got
Chrome via downloading it. Not via some fancy choice menu.

I think the truth here is that Netscape had a lot of friends in the government
and Clinton's DOJ wanted to make some career defining kills. Bill Gates was an
obvious target. It was wrong for Clinton to attack MS. It didn't stop IE6's
dominance, it didn't revive Netscape, and it didn't fix anything. If anything,
it made everything worse.

Tech is generally a meritocracy. People can just migrate to whatever software
they life. MS wasn't stopping Firefox or Netscape from being installed. Lets
give our companies room to compete. Lets not applaud heavy handed legislation
from either the US or the EU. I mean, google fucking maps can't even be seen
in Spain due to corruption. Governments are just as corrupt as business.
Except government is an unstoppable monopoly with guns.

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Eric_WVGG
Agree that in hindsight web browsers was a dumb thing to take down MS over. It
was difficult at the time to make the claim that a browser-less computer would
someday be effectively useless, but that point came.

The lawsuit should have been over their Office suite. (And no, in the end, the
best product did not win.)

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bcardarella
Why isn't Apple forced to the same deal with iOS? Not only do browsers not
have the same prominence but they actually have to use WebView for rendering.
Not to mention the other apps Apple refuses to approve because of
"duplication".

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outside1234
Apple has never had a dominant position in desktop (or any other platform).
That is actually part of their genius, because if they did, they would never
be allowed to do all of the tight integration scenarios that they do.

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icantthinkofone
I would never think that Apple intentionally limits themselves as you imply.
As far as tight integration goes, there is nothing to stop any company from
doing that. You misunderstand why Microsoft was hit so hard in the US and the
EU.

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billpg
I remember being shown this screen - after I had already installed Firefox and
Chrome by downloading them.

(Sorry Opera.)

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Sarkie
I did notice it wasn't in the Windows 10 Beta

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TazeTSchnitzel
Article seems inaccurate: Windows 8 had it too.

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robjh
I'm hoping that with the ballot screen gone I'll see fewer computers from
technically illiterate people with with every browser choice installed and
unused.

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FreakyT
Good riddance -- that screen was nothing more than a historic artifact at this
point.

With Microsoft's monopoly on web-enabled devices finally broken by
Android/iOS, not to mention the emergence of Chrome on Windows desktops, IE-
dominance has finally more or less ended[1].

[1] [http://caniuse.com/#search=webgl](http://caniuse.com/#search=webgl)

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gulbrandr

      IE-dominance has finally more or less ended
    

... in favor of a Google/Chrome-dominance. Not much of a victory for the end
user.

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FreakyT
Did you even look at the browser stats link I posted? _No_ browser has a
majority usage share anymore.

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CmonDev
Do you mean the huge green Chrome bar?

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ewzimm
The size of the bar doesn't represent usage. If you hover over, for example,
Chrome 39, you will see it has 0.13% of global usage.

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mbrubeck
If you click the "Usage relative" button, then the bars do resize to reflect
usage. The numbers here are based on StatCounter measurements, which show
Chrome with a 42% page view share (about 3 times higher than the next most
popular browser):

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#all-browser-ww-
monthly-201311-201...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#all-browser-ww-
monthly-201311-201411)

