

Opera sets its sights on Microsoft









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RE: Rediculous
By kelmon on 12/14/2007 4:21:25 AM , Rating: 2
The EU does not suck - it's standing up for the rights of the consumer and not kowtowing to big business. That the US courts have not sorted this issue out already is damning on their part for complicitly allowing Microsoft to hijack what is supposed to be an open communications medium, i.e. the World Wide Web. Microsoft abused its position as the dominant desktop OS provider by distributing a browser that does not comply with web standards for the past decade and therefore created an IE-only Web.

The EU, in case you missed the news, is addressing Apple's iPod/iTunes monopoly so don't suggest that they are turning a blind eye to this. Apple, however, is safe with it's distribution of Safari with OS X since you can replace it with other browsers without penalty; the same is largely true with much of the other bundled applications in OS X in the same way that you can replace Windows Notepad if you want to.

RE: Rediculous
By Montrevux on 12/15/2007 11:35:34 AM , Rating: 2
What? There are absolutely NO rights of the consumer. The only right you have in a free market is the right NOT to buy their product. The reason this tripe isn't going on in the US is because they believe in more economical freedom than the EU.

RE: Rediculous
By kelmon on 12/17/2007 2:25:04 AM , Rating: 2
I'm sorry, I must have imagined all that anti-trust stuff years ago then and the requested extensions to monitoring of Microsoft's activities in the US.

Honestly, I don't understand how anyone can support Microsoft's position in this - they have willfully implemented a browser within their monopoly OS that "breaks" the World Wide Web. Don't want to buy their product - don't but then the web sites/applications you want to use won't work because they are IE-only. As I have said many times already this is a Catch-22 situation and do you really think that Microsoft is going to resolve this? No. Can you honestly see a situation where another browser manufacturer is going to be able to resolve this situation by producing a product that is so much better than IE that its market share is competed away? No.

The free market is great when it works but in this case we have allowed it to become broken. As the old adage goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" - the browser market is, unfortunately, broken thanks to Microsoft and Netscape and now it needs fixing.


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