Quote:
Originally Posted by chikorita157
Well, if other operating systems have browsers preinstalled like Mac OS X with Safari and Ubuntu with Firefox (or Konqueror with KDE) for example... should the EU tell them to remove them? The main difference is that they are not tightly integrated with the operating system unlike Internet Explorer... Even if Internet Explorer isn't as integrated as it used to... it still holds a majority of the market share which is why the EU wants Microsoft to something about it... but removing it will just give the same results like removing Windows Media Player... instead... they should provide links on the desktop to other web browsers instead of removing IE completely... With IE removed completely... it's really difficult to a average user to download a web browser since there is no web browser to download the install file...
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They didn't tell MS not to *offer* IE... EU said it couldn't be integrated into the operating system because, oddly enough, its an application and there are competing applications on the market. There's also some arguments about why you'd want a browser ententacled into an OS anyway. MS could easily have provided every basic browser on the market in a little folder on the OS as a 'freeware sample mix' including IE8. Corporations do not automatically make the best business decisions -- they're quite frequently driven by arrogant assholes who make stupid-ass choices because they're egomaniacs who hate being told "no".
Open source IE8 and offer it on multiple platforms and all the competing OSs would offer it -- they all have the "we pre-installed one for you but its not part of the intrinsic OS and its easy to switch it out because here's a list of all the browsers we've heard of".
MS sometimes seems psychotically compelled to introduce "lock-in" even when it actively works against their best interests. The purely 'marketing' mandate to integrate the browser into the OS introduced a horde of security and reliability issues that just didn't freaking need to happen. Browsers are, by nature, nasty little promiscuous things that visits all sorts of infested locales... so here lets put it in
Ring Zero.... d'oh.