Microsoft headed for court in EU once again
 

EU alleges failure to comply in good faith with ruling to offer alternate browsers in Win 7 SP 1.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-844872.html

I am sure they deeply regret the error.

The shareholders may possibly not find that funny. Basically this says that Microsoft either doesn't want to obey to the rules or that they are not able to properly test their software.
Both is damaging Microsoft's image (even more).

History shows that mega-corporations sometimes collapse of their own weight. With the prevailing definition of "long-term planning"**, history is likely to repeat.



**We often hear that the common definition of "long-term planning" is centered on the quarterly earnings report.

Kind of like buying a Chevy and demanding they offer a Ford engine?

I think this deal is stupid. Why does an OS company have to offer other companies products? How stupid are people in Europe if they can't install Opera, FF or QTweb or such?

Are the courts busy without this silly stuff?

This is not about stupid. It is about using the OS monopoly to try to enforce a browser monopoly. Seems to me that we simply have stricter anti-trust laws here than the US of A has. Not a bad thing in my opinion.
Better question is, how stupid is Microsoft to "forget" a complete program in a Service Pack?

Ever since I can remember, the issue has been that MS---in effect---forced you to use IE. Looking at cold geeky facts, I think they simply made it difficult to use other browsers.

I think that the anti-trust people should definitely go after MS, but not just over browsers. Computer vendors should have no constraints in offering options for the OS---AND applications.

.

To indulge in a little ancient history, if I recall correctly, at the time, Netscape cost money. By bundling IE and--this is the deceptive part--claiming that it was (and engineering it into) an integral part of the OS, MS destroyed Netscape's business and Netscape along with it.

Requiring the "browser selection screen" was perhaps a bit silly to folks like us who know that there are alternatives, but, given the history of MS's conduct, it has a certain logic to it.

Yes, the keywords here are "to folks like us." The fact remains that when I asked people at work about which web browser they use, just under a half of them replied "google."

No matter what the issue is I always get that warm fuzzy feeling when someone pus microshaft to court. They have sued others over something more idiotic.

When did Netscape cost?

Used it from version 0.9 to 6.x and I never paid for any of them.

They did. The US Justice Department found MS in breach of the Sherman Antitrust Act, MS gave $4.7M to politicians, the case went away.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0701-07.htm

Nowadays most people know that other browsers exist but go back 10 years and most people thought the blue E was "the internet" and thanks to that Mozilla's market share was low and why when Opera came along nobody knew what it was.
The silly thing about the decision to enforce a choice screen is that it's too late to make much difference since the judgement went on so long. However, it still causes Microsoft problems so it still stands as a punishment.
Microsoft is finding it harder to buy off EU officials than it did US ones. This also has a useful (to the EU) side effect that Microsoft may end up having to pay the EU more money, which could pay a couple of week's worth of interest for EU debt.

Netscape was free for personal use, but not for commercial use, according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator

I never used NS regularly (though I toyed with it in my early Linux days) because I was in dial-up world and was a BBS user in those early days.

I was sure it was a commercial product that I only saw for some fee. I never had the $29 or so to waste on it since IE was free.


"However, within 2 months of that press release, Netscape apparently reversed its policy on who could freely obtain and use version 1.0 by only mentioning that educational and non-profit institutions could use version 1.0 at no charge"