Sunday, March 15, 2009

Antitrust Issue of IE in Windows

First the Issue. Here are a few links to clarify the matter:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10144602-75.html
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200904/2807/Microsoft-and-IE-hit-with-EU-antitrust-attack
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/39237

Now the issue is that by bundling the Internet Explorer along with Windows, Microsoft is forcefully capturing the browser market.
Complaints are filed by Opera (as if its used still), Mozilla and Google)

First of all i would like to define some characteristics of a good OS concerning the way it installs:

  • It should have as many common programs pre-installed as possible.
  • It should install with minimum interruptions. That is should not ask the user every now and then. Unless ofcourse advanced installation is selected.
  • It should install in as less time as possible.
Now for pre-installed programs. Imagine a browser where you dont have any browser, no media player, no notepad and not even mspaint. And you can surely forget about all those classic MS-games. And you want security: then somehow access net and get it. No more Windows Defender. Imagine borrowing a pen-drive for a browser, installing everything from Internet. As of now everyone having a computer is expected to have atleast 1MBPS net connection.

Now for interruption. Imagine this, you start OS Installation and a note pops-out: Do you really need MS-Paint? Wont you prefer Adobe Photoshop? and then again in 3 seconds: Why not choose Chrome over IE? Please try that. And next: Which pen drive will you be using? We will be installing specific drivers. And again: Sure you want to play MS-Hearts and not Zapak-Hearts or any similar stuff.... Am sure you will throw away the OS cd. I will.

Next scenario. Your OS comes in 3 Dual Layered DVD's and just a takes 3 hours to install. But yes is a treat when it finally gets installed: You get IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Flock as browsers; MS-Paint, Photoshop, GIMP as paint managers and so on. It does not matter whether you really need the stuff or not. But you get it anyways. Imagine this for a basic user who just wanted a 'simple' computer. And see what he is getting. And consider this that you are paying the cost of those extra DVD's and plus the effort of compiling such software base.

And most important thing: When installing Fedora without net you dont even get Firefox. You just get Konqorer. No one complaining against them. Even with Ubuntu I doubt how much they provide in their single CD.

Options for Microsoft to comply with this ban:

  • Include Everything and before every installation you need to choose all the softwares you want from a long list. OS is too stupid to decide for you. This all is considering you havent chosen advanced installation.
  • Stop making all the softwares and just make the OS. God help on the day when Firefox and Opera become paid or redundant and you add cost to Windows.
  • Just give out a basic version of Windows. No frills service. Am not 'buying' that.
What i think the changes should be:

There be an option of 'Advanced Setup' where you can disable any softwares you dont want. In Basic Setup you get what you're getting now.

And for Chrome and Firefox: Stop whining guys. Those who wanna use your software will. But dont get into such dirty and cheap legal tricks. I use firefox but of my own free will.
And there are still a few sites that require only IE (or say trust only IE) for security purposes. Get your browser compatible for such sites and people will stop using IE. And as for one sentence I read in one of the article: IE offers better features. I suppose it was Netscape which first started this trend by giving out of the box features in both CSS and JS. I think Netscape made JS. Whatever. I dont think you can stop innovation by that. By giving out these extra features you come to know which ones are worth standardizing. Or how else will you get these extra features?

2 comments:

  1. mind blowing article...
    open source is gud but not in every aspect..and it shud accept this fact
    dont use such cheap legal tricks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Why are you writing about Zapak ? it is a failure website with very bad games. It is a failure because of the bad website and useless politics that there is in the company.
    The product and engineering teams are good for nothing and do not do anything and therefore the website is bad.

    ReplyDelete

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