EU vs Microsoft - The battle continues

While Microsoft is threatening the US government that the company will be forced to move jobs overseas, things arent so good for Microsoft in Europe. "The European Union Microsoft competition case," brought by the European Commission of the European Union (EU) against Microsoft is going on for a long time and a short recap can be found here at Wiki. While the previous case is still under investigation, EU came up with another case against Microsoft on Jan 2009 stating that, "Microsoft's tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice." In order to avoid any further complications with the EU, Microsoft announced that all European versions of Windows 7 will ship without Internet explorer. "Given the pending legal proceeding, we’ve decided that instead of including Internet Explorer in Windows 7 in Europe, we will offer it separately and on an easy-to-install basis to both computer manufacturers and users," said Dave Heiner, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Microsoft. While the move was really smart form Microsoft, it wasn't enough for EU.

The European Commision demands that instead of stripping Internet Explorer, Microsoft should bundle popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, along with Internet Explorer with it's upcoming version of Windows. By doing so, EU believes that consumers will have a genuine choice of browsers. But Microsoft is not willing to do so, as it might result in incorporating third party browsers with windows components such as windows explorer, which may lead to some serious issues related with support and security. Though this might not mean anything to the consumers, all these means a lot to the competitors and they must be very happy with EU's efforts. However, it's still a mystery that Apple is not bothered by the EC, while they still ship their OS with one browser(Safari). Do consumers really need a choice of browsers during Windows installation? You may think that it's not going to be that useful. But according to EU, "The development of new online services makes web browsers an increasingly important tool for businesses and consumers, and a lack of real consumer choice on this market would undermine innovation" - a statement which we cannot deny. Will Microsoft comply? This is the EU we are talking about, they have and they will continue to dictate Microsoft on how they would do business in the Europe. Hit on the read link for the official EU memo.

Read - Commission statement on Microsoft Internet Explorer announcement