Browsers, a Question of Fairness…

Unfair to whom?

And so it begins again. With Microsoft getting in gear to ship Windows 7 to an anticipating public, the drums of war are once again beating to the tune of unfair advantages and anti-competitive practices. Of course the European Union is at the lead of the march with Opera and Mozilla in tow saying that Windows 7 will tie Internet Explorer to the operating system and give an unfair advantage the browser over it’s competition.

Before you get your flame comment half written, read this: I understand that at Microsoft we have some serious market share and including anything in the operating system get’s us a lot of users because most people aren’t that worried about using “the best” browser, they just use what’s there (which is not a concession that IE 8 isn’t the best browser, it’s pretty damned good )

Let’s look at an alternate scenario. Say for the sake of argument that Microsoft decided that it was going to get out of the browser business. It’s obvious that a PC is of very little good without a browser so we would be pretty silly to ship an operating system with no browser at all. Let’s see, the choices. Obviously we wouldn’t choose Safari, those snarky Apple folks have made way too much fun of us to do that, Opera is nice, but I am betting at the end of the day Microsoft would choose Firefox since it has a huge market share and is well known.

So bam, Windows 7 ships with Firefox, then what? I bet for one that Opera is pretty pissed off. Now we have just given our advantage to someone else.

Don’t forget the customer…

Let’s not forget a simple fact. A browser is a free product. Neither Microsoft, Mozilla or Opera “sell” their browsers. Of course Firefox piggy backs on Google for search and ad revenue. Microsoft, by default, uses Live Search or MSN. The browser has become a landscape to collect user data and advertise. That’s it’s primary function as a business. So what in effect is being asked of Microsoft is to place a mechanism in Windows to help Google make money.

UPDATE: Microsoft notifies the EU that this decision could further grow Google’s search dominance.

Think about that for one second, then try to find another case in history (besides Microsoft, you’ll find it more than once) where a government has stepped in and said “You have to change your product so that it directly drives profit for your competition.” Imagine the thought, I mean, this is still America right?

Let’s go tell Apple that they have to change their iPod so that it has to support ZunePass subscription music. I bet that gets very well received by Apple. But is it not the same situation? Apple has a massively dominant position with the iPod music player, yet nobody is complaining that it doesn’t support subscription music services. I want to be in the room when someone tells Steve Jobs that he not only has to support ZunePass, but provide the hooks in iTunes to allow users to subscribe to the service. Ha!

Who really Wins?

I may be the most capitalist person on earth but my gut is SO WHAT!? The EU is running around the world suing every successful American company it seems. Billions of dollars in fines are being accessed, which they are keeping to support completely un-related programs. Am I the only one that finds that odd? I mean, imagine that I smashed my car into yours. I take you to court over the damage and the government keeps the money I win in court. Hmmmm. Shouldn’t Mozilla and Opera be seeing some of this fine money if they are the ones that have been damaged by Microsoft’s actions? Sounds like Microsoft and Intel are just the first donors in what appears to be a license to print money.

Microsoft is in an interesting position. Slammed by every fan boy on earth for failing to be innovative, and sued into the ground if it tries to do something cool. The sad part is ultimately it’s the customer who loses. All of these supposed “coups” usually result in more free software for the customer.

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