5 ms·

The MS Dilemma: how do you get a browser on a OS without a browser?

3 points by crocowhile 17y ago

thristian 17y ago
There are lots of minor browsers, most with miniscule market share, so the first question that must be answered is "how many competitors do we want to introduce". On the one hand, a healthy market will have a lot of competitors; on the other hand a lot of these potential competitors will be niche products for a Very Good Reason (i.e. they're crap) and it would be unfair to make Microsoft present them as valid alternatives when they clearly are not (and it might tarnish the reputation of other, better browsers included in the same list). This is a very difficult question to answer in a fair, objective manner. One way might be to say "all browsers whose current market share on Windows is greater than x%", but you have to push the value of x pretty far down before your list of alternative browsers expands much beyond Firefox (ISTR Safari's ~4% share is almost exclusively on the Mac, and Opera is under 1% across all platforms). If it were possible to draw a convincingly fair line selecting Firefox, Opera and IE, that would be my preferred outcome. As to distribution, since every PC needs a default browser, I think the only reasonable thing is to let the non-IE browsers selected in the previous step compete with each other for OEM bundling deals, then legally restrain Microsoft to compete on the same level (price must be the average of the other competitors, no sneakily giving discounts on Office in exchange for IE bundling, etc.) Finally, this age-old misunderstanding from the article clearly needs to be addressed yet again: Surely if Microsoft is fined 900 million Euros for bundling a browser with an Operating System, the same should happen to Apple? Ever heard the phrase "go pick on someone your own size"? If you have a monopoly, by definition there is nobody your own size in your market, and hence there are things that other entities are allowed to do that you can't. APPLE IS NOT A CONVICTED MONOPOLIST, THEREFORE ANTI-TRUST RULES THAT APPLY TO MICROSOFT DO NOT APPLY TO APPLE.
chaosprophet 17y ago
I seriously don't understand all the hullaballoo on the browser issue. All MS would have to do is insert a popup which shows the first time you run windows pointing out the fact that Explorer (the file manager bundled which is part of the windows shell) can very well be used to access the Internet. Ofcourse it's not going to be as convenient as a browser, so most people are just going to use it to google their favorite browser and install. Maybe MS could include a small Bing button on explorer using which you can search for any browser you want. Problem solved.

3 points by crocowhile 17y ago

There are lots of minor browsers, most with miniscule market share, so the first question that must be answered is "how many competitors do we want to introduce". On the one hand, a healthy market will have a lot of competitors; on the other hand a lot of these potential competitors will be niche products for a Very Good Reason (i.e. they're crap) and it would be unfair to make Microsoft present them as valid alternatives when they clearly are not (and it might tarnish the reputation of other, better browsers included in the same list). This is a very difficult question to answer in a fair, objective manner. One way might be to say "all browsers whose current market share on Windows is greater than x%", but you have to push the value of x pretty far down before your list of alternative browsers expands much beyond Firefox (ISTR Safari's ~4% share is almost exclusively on the Mac, and Opera is under 1% across all platforms). If it were possible to draw a convincingly fair line selecting Firefox, Opera and IE, that would be my preferred outcome. As to distribution, since every PC needs a default browser, I think the only reasonable thing is to let the non-IE browsers selected in the previous step compete with each other for OEM bundling deals, then legally restrain Microsoft to compete on the same level (price must be the average of the other competitors, no sneakily giving discounts on Office in exchange for IE bundling, etc.) Finally, this age-old misunderstanding from the article clearly needs to be addressed yet again: Surely if Microsoft is fined 900 million Euros for bundling a browser with an Operating System, the same should happen to Apple? Ever heard the phrase "go pick on someone your own size"? If you have a monopoly, by definition there is nobody your own size in your market, and hence there are things that other entities are allowed to do that you can't. APPLE IS NOT A CONVICTED MONOPOLIST, THEREFORE ANTI-TRUST RULES THAT APPLY TO MICROSOFT DO NOT APPLY TO APPLE.

chaosprophet 17y ago

I seriously don't understand all the hullaballoo on the browser issue. All MS would have to do is insert a popup which shows the first time you run windows pointing out the fact that Explorer (the file manager bundled which is part of the windows shell) can very well be used to access the Internet. Ofcourse it's not going to be as convenient as a browser, so most people are just going to use it to google their favorite browser and install. Maybe MS could include a small Bing button on explorer using which you can search for any browser you want. Problem solved.