EU: browser-free Windows gives no real choice
BRUSSELS -- European Union regulators said Microsoft was offering less choice, not more, by vowing to sell the next version of Windows without any Web browsers at all.
Microsoft said Thursday that it would remove its Internet Explorer browser — and not include any alternatives — in the Windows 7 software it will sell from Oct. 22 in Europe to soothe EU antitrust concerns.
The company is trying to avoid new EU fines, on top of a previous 1.7 billion euro fine, after being earlier charged with unfairly using its operating system monopoly to squeeze into other software markets.
But the European Commission said it preferred to see consumers offered a choice of browser, "not that Windows would be supplied without a browser at all."
"Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less," it said in a statement late Thursday.
The EU will soon decide whether Microsoft had violated EU antitrust law since 1996 by tying the browser to its ubiquitous Windows operating system which is installed on most of the world's desktop computers.
A "must carry" option that would offer several browsers was a better option, the EU executive suggested, because "consumers should be provided with a genuine choice of browsers" on the software that manufacturers install on computers.
It said Microsoft's solution would give no choice to the 5% of consumers who buy Windows software in a stand-alone pack, as opposed to pre-installed on a computer.
Microsoft claims the opposite, saying consumers would be free to choose whether or not to install Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and "will also be free, as they are today, to install other Web browsers." It said it will give PC users who want the browser a way to obtain it.
But regulators were more positive about the larger market — which sells software to computer makers — saying Microsoft's decision meant manufacturers such as Dell could choose to install Internet Explorer or one or more other browsers.
The European Commission said it would have to weigh up whether this would actually create genuine consumer choice.
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