[QUOTE=Chrysantine;2000233]
Quote:
|
For years people complained and Microsoft did nothing about it - IE5 was horribly broken, IE6 was amazingly broken, IE7 was still broken.
|
Doesn't this statement actually go against the finding of anti-competitive behavior by the EU and the rationale that IE prevented widespread adoption of other web browsers. If there product was horribly and amazingly broken than should that not have driven up the market share for other products?
I personally do not care for Windows or IE and I personally find both to be flawed but I do not hold Microsoft personally accountable for hindering innovation of web development or consider them to be the root of all evil, as a lot of folks try to make them out to be.
There are a lot of web site's that I would like to use today from FireFox and Konqueror that I can't because a script immediately redirects me to download IE7. For me this is the problem preventing wider acceptance of other browsers and something that needs to be corrected on the web server side of the house. For me I just choose not to use these sites but some people can not just simply make that decision.
Web developers wanting to use technology that does not work properly in IE could easily implement this same type of mechanism and tell people that to access their site to download a browser capable of supporting their technology. The public embarrassment for the failure to implement international standards would do more to drive Microsoft to fix these problems. I know that in a enterprise environment this is not feasible. Having personally had to build packages to push patches and upgrades across a large enterprise network, I know the challenging and time consuming nature of this. It would be nice to see for a change though.
As far as the major computer manufacturers distributing computers with Microsoft preloaded. I have been putting together all of my own computers for years so this does not affect me to much. Why though someone has not started a desktop computer company specializing in selling systems designed to work with and preloaded with Linux I will never understand. As this would be the company that gets my business.
I personally do not agree with these types of cases or the EU findings. First Microsoft has not built any mechanism into windows to prevent a competitive web browser from being installed. Second even after IE started being bundled most computer manufacturers still offered and often included Netscape Navigator, for a while at least.
Second I do not like the precedent these cases set for future cases. Microsoft has been beat up for: Office, Web Browser, trying to make security improvements, and for bundling an instant messenger, of all things. Personally I think they should be able to bundle what ever they want or make what ever improvement they see fit to there operating system. People have been complaining for years that they want a better product for the price they charge for the POS now. I do not see how this affects competition in any way as long as they do not start restricting what can and can not be installed on it, people are after all fully free to make there own choices on what programs they want to use and how many of each type they want to use.
The person who made the analogy to car companies was in my opinion was almost right on. I say almost because engines are to hard to interchange and very expensive which makes it impractical. A better example would have been to make this analogy with car stereos. When I go to a car dealer they do not offer me the choice to purchase the car with whatever brand car stereo I want. There technology, in the past at least, was usually behind the current market technology and came at a much higher cost than an after market unit. How many people still have a car that was produced well after CD's came out that came with a cassette tape player? As the automotive manufactures hold a monopoly on which stereos they sell with their products should they not also be forced to offer car stereos from competing companies.