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The web browser is used for a significant number of internal OS uses, not limited to internet use - one example is to view help files within the system. There also needs to be a standard internal browser for programs to be able to use, it cuts down significantly down on bloat on installed software - and in these cases you might not just be able to plug any old web browser in, so it is a good thing to have - this way programs can have an internal web browser of a known quality (even if it is somewhat mediocre), so as to not run in to compatibility issues when you try to use one of these apps with Opera, Firefox, Chrome, or something else.
In the past, the case was made quite strongly, but I think was counter-acted by the fact that it was and still is very easy for a manufacturer to install an alternate browser that is available. Furthermore, it's easy to argue that while the case could be strongly made (IE4/Win98), it may be worth considering looking back and seeing the foresight they had in integrating the browser in to the OS.
While today there's a push to separate the OS and browser again, it is more on a virtual level - putting the browser in a virtual sandbox to minimize security risks, separate threads so as to minimize the chance that crashing one tab crashes all of the browser windows, and similar things - the integration of browser and OS is something we have today and will have for the foreseeable future.
Lastly, as albanian points out - while IE comes with windows, other options are freely available, and can be installed with a couple quick clicks of the mouse.
There's no monopoly on internet browsers (Or consumer OSes these days), there are viable free options (firefox, opera, and chrome), and it's not like any of them are hiding.
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Microsoft made it clear to low-information users that IE was the standard by its inclusion and by the way the launch pages worked when you first started up the browser or attempted to use the network / dial up setup tools.
Yes they did things wrong but it's a different ball game now and as long as MS is kept in check in the future as Windows has such a massive lead in the OS world then it won't be able to get back to those unfair practices again.
Thanks for the question!
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However, now? No, I don't think MS is as much of a threat anymore. They really haven't been, since the web caught on. I remember days of fear, where anybody with an idea had to say "Maybe Microsoft will buy me...but more likely they'll just steal my idea and crush me and I won't be able to do anything about it." Windows versus OS/2 anybody? Microsoft Money vs Quicken? Lotus? Wordperfect? [Quicken is the only one that survived, there...]
But honestly, when in the last 10 years has anybody said "Holy cow, Microsoft is in the market? Oh no, we're doomed!" They have Windows and Office, sure, but Linux and Mac make major gains in the former, while things like Google Docs and other web application suites are rapidly obviating the position that Office has held.
It has been said that Microsoft grew out of the government sitting on IBM in the 80's. If that is true, then perhaps it is Google that grew out of the government sitting on Microsoft in the 90's. The real question is how far will Google go before the government comes after them, and who will step into the next spotlight?
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
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And the danger of the monopoly was that it made the coding people sloppy, and that has led to our present problems with viruses and malware. This could have been avoided in one of two ways. First, Microsoft could have been broken up into an OS company and a program company. Second, the copyright on an OS could have been limited to 7 years. Either step would have fostered more competition and led to more secure systems.
What I would like to see now is for Google to puts its interface on top of Linux and interface it with Firefox and other browsers to make a true operating system.Trustworthiness:Vendor reliability:Privacy:Child safety:
Source(s):
years of dealing with the bureaucracy
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(a) will be solved when people become aware of other browsers and CHOOSE to use them. Simple as that. If people continue to CHOOSE Internet Explorer, then that's what'll dominate. Fair's fair. Doesn't matter which one's "best".
(b) will be solved ONLY when Microsoft "unbundles" system maintenance and makes it possible to apply maintenance using ANY browser. This should be REQUIRED of Microsoft. The paying user SHOULD have a choice. They're paying big $$$ for Windows and for Office, after all. This topic is the subject of lawsuits against MS.
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Microsoft abused their position not only with Internet Explorer, but also with Windows Media Player. They continue to break the law and they must be punished accordingly.
The Commission are dedicated professionals and will endeavour to uphold the law and provide the consumer and other companies with the best playing field.
Its a problem for any other company trying to compete if Microsoft doesn't support the
open standards everyone else applies. Many web sites are designed to
work only with IE, which means other browsers won't always work out of the box. Microsoft deliberately withholds interoperability information in order to put rival software companies at a disadvantage.
A good way to give users a genuine choice is to strip out IE from
Windows and offer users alist of browsers to choose from.
Play fair, or don't play at all
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Answered Question
January 20, 2009 01:47 AM
Do you think that Microsoft had an unfair monopoly on the Internet browser market?
The European Commission filed antitrust charges against Microsoft over the way Internet Explorer is bundled with Windows software. This, the commission and rival Internet browser companies argue, gives bIE an unfair monopoly over the browser market. Do you think these charges and allegations are justified
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Yes (0)
No (0)
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Best Answer Chosen by Asker
| January 20, 2009 03:11 AM |
The web browser is used for a significant number of internal OS uses, not limited to internet use - one example is to view help files within the system. There also needs to be a standard internal browser for programs to be able to use, it cuts down significantly down on bloat on installed software - and in these cases you might not just be able to plug any old web browser in, so it is a good thing to have - this way programs can have an internal web browser of a known quality (even if it is somewhat mediocre), so as to not run in to compatibility issues when you try to use one of these apps with Opera, Firefox, Chrome, or something else.
In the past, the case was made quite strongly, but I think was counter-acted by the fact that it was and still is very easy for a manufacturer to install an alternate browser that is available. Furthermore, it's easy to argue that while the case could be strongly made (IE4/Win98), it may be worth considering looking back and seeing the foresight they had in integrating the browser in to the OS.
While today there's a push to separate the OS and browser again, it is more on a virtual level - putting the browser in a virtual sandbox to minimize security risks, separate threads so as to minimize the chance that crashing one tab crashes all of the browser windows, and similar things - the integration of browser and OS is something we have today and will have for the foreseeable future.
Lastly, as albanian points out - while IE comes with windows, other options are freely available, and can be installed with a couple quick clicks of the mouse.
There's no monopoly on internet browsers (Or consumer OSes these days), there are viable free options (firefox, opera, and chrome), and it's not like any of them are hiding.
| Asker's Rating: |
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Other Answers (10)
January 20, 2009 02:04 AM
Somewhat yes. Actually I'm just aggravated at the fallout of IEs shortcomings as a browser that I've had to deal with. Around the time Windows 95 and 98 came out, I was doing tech support, and there were many issues surrounding IE and its various hiccups that I had to deal with first hand, and at that time most companies just went with whatever browser came with Windows rather than going with Netscape or Mozilla, for example.
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January 20, 2009 02:06 AM
I don't see how it could, with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome being available free. They are what I use whenever possible. Other rivals are still around as well. I strongly disagree that bundling is bad in itself. It's an efficient way to distribute software. As long as there is a lot of strong competition, that proves there is no monopoly.
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January 20, 2009 02:33 AM
Remember that not everyone knew that there were other options out there. Right around when this all started I ran a private on-site Tech Support business and I can't even count the number of times that I would tell someone to get Firefox or some other browser and they would be surprised to find out that there were other browsers. Microsoft made it clear to low-information users that IE was the standard by its inclusion and by the way the launch pages worked when you first started up the browser or attempted to use the network / dial up setup tools.
Yes they did things wrong but it's a different ball game now and as long as MS is kept in check in the future as Windows has such a massive lead in the OS world then it won't be able to get back to those unfair practices again.
Thanks for the question!
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January 21, 2009 08:25 PM
Okay, I'm calling bogus on these stats ..or, at least, misleading. What are you suggesting these stats represent? The entire web? I doubt there's 15% of the (non-technical) browsing public even *knows* of Chrome's existence. Looks to me like those stats are for a website that's largely visited by tecchie/IT people. I've never seen a general web-stat that suggests Firefox has over 50% of the market ..highest I could find was slightly over 40%: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp ..and, outside the geek sites, 20 to 30% seems more reasonable:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
Chrome doesn't even have 5% ..in fact it's unlikely it's over 1% now (now that the geek crowd have largely checked it out, found they miss their extensions, and gone back to Firefox.)
The main 'problem' with the web today is IE's domination of the market. It's dominant because your *average* (ie: non-technical, non-geek) user, who is the vast majority of the browsing public, is incredibly apathetic to what software they use. They will use what is there. They will avoid going to the hassle of downloading and (shudder) *installing* anything coz that's just too much work or they aren't confident with doing such things.
The problem isn't so much that IE is there by default, it's that Microsoft for so long made *sure* it was the only browser there, and any OEM PC builder that dared to put Netscape on machines (back in the browser-wars days) was penalised by Microsoft (in pricing, delays, etc..) It was blatantly anti-competitive and legal action should have been taken back then, long before IE became this dominant.
And now they have managed to get such a huge market share they can easily ignore standards (anyone who hand-codes HTML will know what I mean), have a terrible security model (active-x on webpages? sandboxing was so long overdue) and lose interest in the continued development of IE entirely. They really let the development of IE languish before they got worried about Firefox's market-share and got onto IE7 ..the entire web has suffered as a result IMHO.
If OEM's could be bundling Firefox, Safari, Chome, whatever, so it was the default browser when the the end-user first turns on the machine then there would be some real competition. Right now people just use what is there ..and what's there isn't particularly good. Damn right Microsoft has an unfair monopoly on the browser market.
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http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
Chrome doesn't even have 5% ..in fact it's unlikely it's over 1% now (now that the geek crowd have largely checked it out, found they miss their extensions, and gone back to Firefox.)
The main 'problem' with the web today is IE's domination of the market. It's dominant because your *average* (ie: non-technical, non-geek) user, who is the vast majority of the browsing public, is incredibly apathetic to what software they use. They will use what is there. They will avoid going to the hassle of downloading and (shudder) *installing* anything coz that's just too much work or they aren't confident with doing such things.
The problem isn't so much that IE is there by default, it's that Microsoft for so long made *sure* it was the only browser there, and any OEM PC builder that dared to put Netscape on machines (back in the browser-wars days) was penalised by Microsoft (in pricing, delays, etc..) It was blatantly anti-competitive and legal action should have been taken back then, long before IE became this dominant.
And now they have managed to get such a huge market share they can easily ignore standards (anyone who hand-codes HTML will know what I mean), have a terrible security model (active-x on webpages? sandboxing was so long overdue) and lose interest in the continued development of IE entirely. They really let the development of IE languish before they got worried about Firefox's market-share and got onto IE7 ..the entire web has suffered as a result IMHO.
If OEM's could be bundling Firefox, Safari, Chome, whatever, so it was the default browser when the the end-user first turns on the machine then there would be some real competition. Right now people just use what is there ..and what's there isn't particularly good. Damn right Microsoft has an unfair monopoly on the browser market.
January 21, 2009 11:58 PM
I agree most of my visitor are of the tech savey which is probably way so many are Firefox and Chrome users. But the trend is heading away from Microsoft, besides if Windows didn't come with a browser there would be a lot of confused people out there. Plus if there's no browser how do you download a 3rd party browser?
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January 22, 2009 04:24 AM
Yes, those stats were very misleading. There are plenty of stats available online to give a better idea of market-share. Use those, or state what your stats really represent. (tech people are a small minority of the browsing public, and the least susceptable to anticompetitive moves in the browser market.)
I wouldn't mind IE being the only browser if only MS made half an effort to a) keep it up to date, b) keep it standards compliant, and c) keep it secure. (sandboxing has been introduced *far* too late.)
I'm not suggesting Windows ever be shipped without a browser, or even that IE be uninstalled. (It is good to have a known html-rendering engine on ever windows box ..many other programs make use of it.) But OEM's are able to load other software on the boxes they sell, and they do (oh god, they do.) So why shouldn't they put a decent browser on there too? Firefox preloaded, with adblock, dictionaries, flash, java, silverlight ..hell, even Chrome, once it reaches maturity ..Resellers would love being able to say "this PC is safer for web-browsing than those other people sell."
Who knows if Microsoft still has any shady tactics in play that stops them from doing that. They certainly did in the past. (The distant past, when Netscape was actually better than IE.) ..I would also like Safari to not be the only browser on the Mac too. But that's a battle probably just as unwinnable. :)
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I wouldn't mind IE being the only browser if only MS made half an effort to a) keep it up to date, b) keep it standards compliant, and c) keep it secure. (sandboxing has been introduced *far* too late.)
I'm not suggesting Windows ever be shipped without a browser, or even that IE be uninstalled. (It is good to have a known html-rendering engine on ever windows box ..many other programs make use of it.) But OEM's are able to load other software on the boxes they sell, and they do (oh god, they do.) So why shouldn't they put a decent browser on there too? Firefox preloaded, with adblock, dictionaries, flash, java, silverlight ..hell, even Chrome, once it reaches maturity ..Resellers would love being able to say "this PC is safer for web-browsing than those other people sell."
Who knows if Microsoft still has any shady tactics in play that stops them from doing that. They certainly did in the past. (The distant past, when Netscape was actually better than IE.) ..I would also like Safari to not be the only browser on the Mac too. But that's a battle probably just as unwinnable. :)
January 20, 2009 03:03 AM
Are you talking about present, or history? Historically, yes ,they were a monopoly and got called out on it. The only reason they never got any meaningful punishment for it was we changed administrations right in the middle and it just sort of disappeared. But I remember the days watching them sit in court and lie and fake video tapes and all kinds of other wonderful things that guilty organizations do. The Office functions that only the Windows developers had access to? The special bundling where any manufacturer that did not include Windows on every single machine got screwed on the price? All facts, all a matter of record. They were found guilty. However, now? No, I don't think MS is as much of a threat anymore. They really haven't been, since the web caught on. I remember days of fear, where anybody with an idea had to say "Maybe Microsoft will buy me...but more likely they'll just steal my idea and crush me and I won't be able to do anything about it." Windows versus OS/2 anybody? Microsoft Money vs Quicken? Lotus? Wordperfect? [Quicken is the only one that survived, there...]
But honestly, when in the last 10 years has anybody said "Holy cow, Microsoft is in the market? Oh no, we're doomed!" They have Windows and Office, sure, but Linux and Mac make major gains in the former, while things like Google Docs and other web application suites are rapidly obviating the position that Office has held.
It has been said that Microsoft grew out of the government sitting on IBM in the 80's. If that is true, then perhaps it is Google that grew out of the government sitting on Microsoft in the 90's. The real question is how far will Google go before the government comes after them, and who will step into the next spotlight?
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
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January 20, 2009 04:35 AM
The problem was not the monopoly on the browser, it was the monopoly on the operating system compounded by the problem of computer illiteracy in the upper echelons of government. If we measure the start of the computer from 1978, then it has been 30 years until we had a president who was compute savvy. Here in Hawaii the state and local governments were notoriously computer illiterate. They fell for Intel's SX trick. Remember those processors? It was clear that the judiciary didn't have a clue as to what the monopoly of Microsoft meant.And the danger of the monopoly was that it made the coding people sloppy, and that has led to our present problems with viruses and malware. This could have been avoided in one of two ways. First, Microsoft could have been broken up into an OS company and a program company. Second, the copyright on an OS could have been limited to 7 years. Either step would have fostered more competition and led to more secure systems.
What I would like to see now is for Google to puts its interface on top of Linux and interface it with Firefox and other browsers to make a true operating system.Trustworthiness:Vendor reliability:Privacy:Child safety:
Source(s):
years of dealing with the bureaucracy
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January 20, 2009 06:35 PM
The issues with malware are largely due to the proliferation of Windows. If Windows had a 10% market share, and everyone else used a different OS, the malware would be targetted at the people that use that OS. If things were more even, say, 40/30/30, we'd probably see somewhat less malware in total because it would take more effort to infect the same number of computers.
4-5 years ago, security was a huge issue with XP, but XP has been spiffed up reasonably well now, and Vista/7 puts Windows in the same league as the other major OSes.
The biggest security issues these days, and for a while now, are due to people running computers that are not updated. The conflicker.b virus, for example, which infected 1.1 million PCs, had its security hole fixed and patched for automatic update almost 3 months ago.
IMO, the future of OSes is going to be that anything that's a significant security threat will essentially be stuck in its own sandbox, some sort of VM.
Computing platforms don't even matter all that much these days, given that we can run VMs, run almost any OS inside any other OS, and we're beginning to have the processing power to be able to use multiple computing environments on a desktop.
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4-5 years ago, security was a huge issue with XP, but XP has been spiffed up reasonably well now, and Vista/7 puts Windows in the same league as the other major OSes.
The biggest security issues these days, and for a while now, are due to people running computers that are not updated. The conflicker.b virus, for example, which infected 1.1 million PCs, had its security hole fixed and patched for automatic update almost 3 months ago.
IMO, the future of OSes is going to be that anything that's a significant security threat will essentially be stuck in its own sandbox, some sort of VM.
Computing platforms don't even matter all that much these days, given that we can run VMs, run almost any OS inside any other OS, and we're beginning to have the processing power to be able to use multiple computing environments on a desktop.
January 20, 2009 06:51 PM
Perhaps they had one, in the past, (a) because it was "built in" to the system AND (b) because, to install updates to Windows/Office it was REQUIRED that one use Internet Explorer. (a) will be solved when people become aware of other browsers and CHOOSE to use them. Simple as that. If people continue to CHOOSE Internet Explorer, then that's what'll dominate. Fair's fair. Doesn't matter which one's "best".
(b) will be solved ONLY when Microsoft "unbundles" system maintenance and makes it possible to apply maintenance using ANY browser. This should be REQUIRED of Microsoft. The paying user SHOULD have a choice. They're paying big $$$ for Windows and for Office, after all. This topic is the subject of lawsuits against MS.
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January 21, 2009 12:12 AM
Yes. I agree with the European Union.Microsoft abused their position not only with Internet Explorer, but also with Windows Media Player. They continue to break the law and they must be punished accordingly.
The Commission are dedicated professionals and will endeavour to uphold the law and provide the consumer and other companies with the best playing field.
Its a problem for any other company trying to compete if Microsoft doesn't support the
open standards everyone else applies. Many web sites are designed to
work only with IE, which means other browsers won't always work out of the box. Microsoft deliberately withholds interoperability information in order to put rival software companies at a disadvantage.
A good way to give users a genuine choice is to strip out IE from
Windows and offer users alist of browsers to choose from.
Play fair, or don't play at all
Permalink | Report
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