Internet Explorer: Brussels made peace with Microsoft

Posted by Geronimo Boosh on December 16, 2009 · Leave a Comment

The European Union Microsoft bends on a major issue: the integration of Internet Explorer in Windows. Today, Microsoft’s browser is provided by default to all users of the Windows operating system. A situation that the Commission deems anticompetitive. After years of procedure, the software giant has made a proposal that the EU executive has agreed: to give choice to users. Now Windows users can choose between several software for Web browsing through a selection screen (screen bundle) that appear during the first connection.

Microsoft disclaims an important vector of development for their browser home, but avoids a possible fine of Brussels. The European Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Kroes, jubilant. “Today the Commission has committed a serious competition in a key market, the browsers,” she told a press conference . “For the first time in over a decade, European Internet users will have a real choice,” she said.

The “sometimes difficult relations”

“Today’s decision marks the end of the antitrust investigation of the Commission” and “I hope, closes a long chapter in the sometimes difficult relations between Microsoft and the Commission to open a new, more positive, “said Neelie Kroes, who will soon leave his current position for another term as commissioner, responsible for Information Society and Media in the new Barroso Commission.

Almost alone on the market a few years ago, Internet Explorer is now in competition with other browsers, including Mozilla Firefox (about one third of market share), Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and the Norwegian Opera . The screen of choice offered by Microsoft, a neutral window should propose these five browsers side by side, in a sequence generated randomly. The famous choice will be offered from mid-March 2010, the time that Microsoft to adapt its software.