Bill Gates? Meet the European Union, You Loser.
Bill Gates is a prick. I don’t demand his death, I’m just sayin’
But the European Union isn’t afraid of him, like the U.S. gummit is. Microsoft recently lost a lawsuit filed by the EU, and now Opera, a browser maker, wants them to take him on again.
Opera is asking that Microsoft be forced to “unbundle” their web browser and operating system allowing other browsers, such as Opera’s, to be able to compete more fairly. They are also asking that Microsoft adhere to common Web standards so that developers creating hosted applications and web sites do not allow or need specific code written for viewing on Internet Explorer compared to other browsers.
Microsoft makes operating systems. Microsoft makes browsers. Microsoft says buyer of computer with Microsoft OS installed must also take their memory hog browser. In effect: Use any other browser you wish in addition to Explorer, but keep your grubby uninstaller off our browser.
Bill Gates probably doesn’t flip the bird in public, but he sure encourages his developers to flip us off.
Bill Gates is a prick.
Let me use the TV example. New TV’s are sold without attached antennae. I don’t have cable so I must buy an exterior antenna to watch TV. I must also pay for the “cable ready” part of the TV that I don’t need or want, and the TV is useless to me without an antenna.And then there’s the whole issue of HDTV tuners.
At least you can surf the web with an IE browser; you are not totally locked out of the system. If you want a different browser, you just “pay” extra to view things via the method you want, like I must pay for an antenna or HDTV tuner to view TV the way I want.
As long as there is a huge market for their OS, why should they change their unique standards? Look what happened to CocaCola when they changed their recipe standards.
@Catch Her In The Wry.
I don’t agree that other companies bundle things that I can’t remove. That would be like Sony selling TV’s that only gets NBC. Or Chevy making a car that only ran on Shell fuel. (to use your examples)
I can’t strip the browser from the OS and install my own browser. I know MSFT has dominated the world with a lame, buggy OS = people are “upgrading” from Vista to XP!
Their system is not compliant with generally accepted accounting procedures for operating systems. ie: every other OS in the world except MSFT builds to these standards.
There are other operating systems if you don’t like how Microsoft bundles things. It is no different than bundling options on other things: i.e. cars, appliances. Other companies bundle things all the time and consumers have to buy things they don’t want. Microsoft is no different; they are just bigger. They developed easy, usable operating systems for the average consumer, marketed it well, and should be able to bundle whatever they want to it.