Opera – Technology Liberation Front

Windows Reduced Media Edition Redux?

Ryan Radia — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:55:04 +0000

The European Commission may order Microsoft to strip Internet Explorer from certain versions of Windows, according to a preliminary ruling against Microsoft stemming from a complaint brought by Opera. Opera claims that Microsoft is “abusing its dominant position” by bundling IE with Windows, and consequently denying consumers “genuine choice” among web browsers.

If the European Commission upholds Opera’s complaint against Microsoft, it wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft has been found guilty of antitrust violations stemming from applications bundled with Windows.

Back in 2004, the Commission ruled that it was illegal for Microsoft to bundle its Windows Media Player with Windows and ordered Microsoft to offer a Media Player-less version of the operating system. Microsoft responded by unveiling the wryly named “Windows XP Reduced Media Edition.” Unsurprisingly, the European Commission rejected the name, so Microsoft renamed the OS “Windows N.”

Despite Windows N’s fairly neutral-sounding name, consumers showed little interest in Windows N when it hit the shelves. It’s quite obvious why Windows N was a flop–why would anybody want to run an operating system lacking useful components, especially when plenty of alternatives are available online at the click of a button?

The same reasoning is sure to relegate a browserless Windows (Windows: Reduced Internet Edition, perhaps?) to commercial irrelevance. Such a product would be placed on shelves solely to satisfy regulators convinced that they’re somehow “protecting” consumers by ensuring inferior products can be had.

How would the average user even select a preferred browser in the first place without a pre-installed browser? While OEMs could always pre-install a browser, anyone who wanted to install (or reinstall) a browserless version of Windows from scratch would need to jump through hoops just to get online.

More to the point, Opera’s claim against Microsoft looks downright absurd given the reality of today’s increasingly competitive browser marketplace. Despite IE being bundled with Windows, Firefox has gained significant ground on IE in recent years. Four years ago, IE had 91% global market share, while Firefox hovered around 3.5%. Now, Firefox is almost at 21% market share, and IE recently dropped below 70%.

Firefox’s ascent did not happen because of a mass exodus of users from Windows to other operating systems. To be sure, Windows has faltered a bit as of late, but Firefox has gained the following of a massive number of Windows users who elected to download and install Firefox as a replacement for Internet Explorer. This illustrates that users are perfectly willing to pick their favorite application for a given task, even if that means downloading a third-party app on the Internet. Plenty of other programs, like VLC and Google Desktop, have taken off among Windows users even though these apps largely duplicate the functionality of bundled Windows components.

Where does all this leave Opera? Unlike Firefox, Opera is still a laggard in terms of market share. Blaming Opera’s inability to gain a large user base on the bundling of IE with Windows, however, is entirely misplaced. The folks at Opera may feel that going after Microsoft might help them peel off a few users-or, at least, get Opera’s name out there in the press-but Opera’s biggest enemy is certainly not Internet Explorer.

IE’s Browser Market Share Down by 8-10% in 2008

Berin Szoka — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:30:17 +0000

Microsoft’s share of the browser market across all versions of Internet Explorer has dropped, by one estimate, dropped from 78.58% in December 2007 to 68.15% in December 2008 (or by just under 8% in another estimate).

[IE’s] share dropped from 69.77% in November to 68.15% in December. [During the same period,] Firefox gained more than half a point and ended up at 21.34%, Safari approaches the [10%] hurdle with 7.93% and Chrome came in at 1.04%, the first time Google was able to cross the 1% mark.

This is particularly interesting:

Since IE6 is used primarily within corporations, its market share is much higher during the week than it is on weekends. As a result, all other browsers gain on weekends and especially during a holiday. Because of that circumstance, Net Applications noted that the December numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. However, it is worth the note that IE6 achieved … market share numbers of about 28% during the week and about 21% on weekends in early 2008. In December, these numbers were down to about 20% during the week and 15% on weekends.

So, Microsoft still has an established base among corporate users, where IT administrators generally prevent employees from installing new applications (including browsers) and the sysadmins often don’t roll out alternative browsers across a corporate network for any one of several possible reasons, including:

They just don’t want to bother having to install, regularly upgrade and support another piece of software;
They may overestimate the security vulnerability of such alternative browsers compared to Internet Explorer;
The crustier sysadmins may not realize that today’s browsers are not only free for individual users, but also for corporate users–unlike the old Netscape Navigator; and
Corporate intranets may be designed for IE, in which case rolling out an alternative browser might cause confusion among less tech-savvy employees.

Microsoft may still have an advantage that could be considered “unfair,” but so what? IE’s share of home browser usage may have fallen faster among home users than corporate users, but the overall trend line is clear: increasing numbers of Americans are taking advantage of the rich browser options available to them, both at home and at work. As Microsoft’s share of the browser market falls further with each passing year–at an apparently accelerating rate–the concerns about Microsoft’s “dominance” of the browser market that drove the Justice Department’s antitrust jihad against the company a decade ago seem increasingly obsolete.

If nothing else, the increasing competitiveness of the browser market should be a persistent reminder to those who advocate top-down regulatory “fixes” to perceived iniquities of online markets that competition and innovation may move faster than government regulators or the courts.

My prediction for 2009: IE’s overall share will fall even further than it did in 2008, with particularly strong growth in Google Chrome’s market share.

Googlephobia: Part 5 – Google at Ten & Its Competition

Berin Szoka — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:30:51 +0000

By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer

As we noted in our intro to this ongoing series, Google’s tenth anniversary has passed with Googlephobia reaching new heights of hysteria.

But is Google really too big and dangerous, or are people just too lazy to find other alternatives to each of the wonderful services that Google offers? If one is truly paranoid about the firm’s supposed dominance, it doesn’t take much effort to live a Google-free life. To prove it, we set out to find alternatives to each of the services that Google provides. After awhile, we got a little tired of compiling alternatives in each category and just provided links for the additional choices at your disposal. It’s tough to see what the fuss is about with the cornucopia of choices at our disposal. If you don’t like Google, then just don’t use it or any of its services. The choice is yours.

In each case, we’ve listed Google first, even though Google may not be the market leader ( e.g., Google’s relatively unknown social network Orkut).

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