Category: Technology Author : Steven Hodson Posted: February 24, 2009
Tags : Apple, browsers, chrome, firefox, google, mozilla, opera, safari
I’ve been stewing over this bucketful of crap about the European Union wanting to give Microsoft the good old underhanded grab because Opera is whining about how it can’t get any market share away from Microsoft because of Internet Explorer being shipped as part of the Windows OS. Then Mozilla decides that ya that sounds like a great idea and jumps on the EU bandwagon like a bunch of whiney little brats. Now today Google decides is doesn’t want to be left out of any parties so it petitions to join in on the anti-trust case.
Sorry but the whole argument that Microsoft has a monopoly on the browser market because it ships IE with Windows is nothing short of bullshit – plain and simple. The idea behind a monopoly is that Company ‘A’ has a complete stranglehold on a segment of the market that not a single competitor has a chance to gain customers away from them.
Well excuse me all to hell but perhaps nobody is paying attention to the numbers in this lala-land but tell me the name of the one company that has been losing browser market share over the past year.
C’mon .. it’s not hard. Hell just Google for it and the numbers are there for those that aren’t frikken blind.
The only company to see its numbers go down; and no Opera you don’t count anymore, is Microsoft. Mozilla’s Firefox has continually climbed with numbers of anywhere between 20% to 30% being commonly tossed around. Even Google’s Chrome in its short life has been taking away users from Internet Explorer so what the hell do they have to bitch about. Then we have Apple’s Safari browser which is also showing strong gains, and speaking of Safari if the big whine point everyone has against Microsoft is that they ship their own browser with their own operating system how come Apple is getting a pass?
The fact is that the browser market is one of the strongest ones out there as far as software is concerned. All the players – the serious ones anyway – hard pushing hard and producing great products. Firefox continues to grow but is facing some stiff competition from both Google and Apple. As far as I am concerned this whole EU nonsense is nothing more than them trying to return to the Microsoft ATM to see if they can grab a few more billion and Microsoft’s competitors are only to willing to tag along.
Feb 25, 2009
Although I do agree that just having a browser installed does necessarily mean this is a monopoly, there are other reasons I believe Microsoft has played this unfairly and the EU is justified in prosecuting them.
1. Microsoft does not let you uninstall it's browser software. They say it's because it's integrated with the system, which is true, but then you could let just the IE browser shell be deleted and allow the rest to work in the background. This annoys competitors because even if their browser is installed, the user will always have the choice of falling back to IE.
2. Microsoft strictly prohibits their OEM dealers from installing alternate browsers as a default on the OS when a new computer is sold. That is just protectionist and I think they should be prosecuted based on that.
Feb 25, 2009
Google is claiming that Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems and that it is using that monopoly to hurt the competitiveness of browsers. Not that Microsoft has a monopoly on browsers.