European Commission vs. Microsoft – Browsers War
The European Commission is now accusing Microsoft of antitrust practices by bundling Internet Explorer with the Windows OS.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djhighlights/200901161608DOWJONESDJONLINE000884.htm
So, what’s next?
The European Commission will ask Microsoft to remove Paint because bundling a sophisticated paint program with the OS is harming Adobe’s Photoshop sales.
The European Commission will ask Microsoft to remove Wordpad and Notepad because bundling sophisticated word processing software with the OS is harming Sun’s StarOffice sales.
The European Commission will ask Microsoft to remove all the network stacks from the OS because it is harming network stack vendor’s sales.
The European Commission will ask Microsoft to remove the fonts included with Windows because bundling fonts with the OS is harming font vendors’ sales.
The European Commission will ask Microsoft to remove mouse support from Windows because it is harming the mouse driver’s vendors’ sales.
The European Commission will ask Microsoft to remove the graphical user interface from Windows because it is harming Apple, KDE, and GNOME sales.
To solve these problems, Microsoft is working on a European specific version of Windows and I happen to have an exclusive screenshot of the Alpha version.
Of course this is sarcasm but the real question is if the European Commission rules that bundling a browser in the OS is bad trade practice from Microsoft, will they impose the same restrictions to Apple and Linux vendors?
