Opera seeks EC ruling against Microsoft

by Stephen Withers

Friday, 14 December 2007

Page 1 of 2 ! Norway-based browser developer Opera Software has filed a complaint with the European Commission alleging anticompetitive behaviour. There are two strings to Opera's bow. The company is objecting to the way Windows includes Internet Explorer, and that IE does not follow industry standards. The cure for the first issue would be to require Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows. That approach didn't work too well in a previous EC ruling against Microsoft - the software giant complied when it was ordered to offer a version of Windows without Windows Media Player, but charged the same price for both versions. Consequently, sales were negligible. Perhaps this time the EC will order Microsoft to include other browsers with Windows, but for that to have any real effect there would also have to be a requirement that all browsers be given equal billing until the user selects a default. "The European Court of First Instance confirmed in September that Microsoft has illegally tied Windows Media Player to Windows," said Jason Hoida, Opera's deputy general counsel. "We are simply asking the Commission to apply these same, clear principles to the Internet Explorer tie, a tie that has even more profound effects on consumers and innovation." The second issue could ultimately be seen as the more important of those raised by Opera. Having to cope with the quirks of different web browsers has long been the bane of web developers' lives. Other browser developers have been working towards standards compatibility as demonstrated by the ACID2 test. Current versions of Opera and Safari pass, as does Firefox 3 - presumably that will eventually spill over to other browsers using the Gecko engine, such as Camino. << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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