Who wins from the EU-Microsoft browser deal?
Microsoft’s proposal to offer European users a choice of browsers upon installing Windows may satisfy regulator concerns over competition issues. But the practical implementation may throw up some other problems.
As Dave Parrack explained earlier today, the principle of the solution seems to keep everyone happy: the European Union gets to force changes and Microsoft staves off future regulatory problems with minimal effect. (In reality, the vast majority of people who haven’t currently tried another browser will likely opt for Internet Explorer even when presented with a choice.) But several questions remain:
How many browsers will be included in the list?
Reports today put the list at either definitely five browsers, or around five to six browsers. (The difference could be significant as I’ll note in a moment.) Interestingly, a Microsoft slideshow demonstrating how the choice would work appears to display at least seven browsers and likely more.
How will these be selected?
Microsoft’s proposal is that the list should be based on market share over the past six months, with the list updated twice a year. However, the sites making the cut could vary depending on what source is used for market share.
If the list is limited to five sites, it’s a pretty safe bet it will be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. If there are six or more slots, the gap between each site starts getting pretty narrow, meaning different sources could give different rankings.
Whatever source is used, it would make sense to limit it to share among Windows users in European Union countries. Of course, there’s rarely a guarantee that what makes sense will happen in such issues.
How will the sites be ordered?
The most likely option will be that they are listed by market share. Oddly Microsoft’s example has Safari, Google and Opera in third through fifth position respectively, which sounds pretty low for Opera. That’s at best an unfortunate coincidence given that Opera made the complaint which kicked off the entire investigation.
Another possible option, to list them alphabetically, appears a no-go. As Stuart Turton of PC Pro notes, if that happened “you can expect Opera to be renamed Aardvark overnight.”
What about other browsers?
It wouldn’t be at all surprising to see some of the smaller browsers complain or even take legal action over being left out of the list. That’s particularly likely if there are six or seven spots meaning that only one or two minor players make the list.
There’s certainly a danger that those sites which make the initial list will stay there permanently as the inclusion should boost their market shares. It’s also arguable that having a list based on market share could be a barrier to entry for any new browsers.
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July 27th, 2009
A simple “random” order for the top 5 browsers would work fine. Some people would see IE first, some people would see Opera first. Over the tens of millions of new PCs each year, there would be enough variety that no one browser would benefit from the order.
July 28th, 2009
This whole thing is ridiculous.
July 29th, 2009
Although, as has been mentioned. Most people will probably opt for IE who have no browser experience, and those who do will likely know which browser they want to use, and so the order will make little difference.
If the EU thinks they know best, they should create the rules on which browsers should be included, how they’re ordered etc.
July 29th, 2009
While the EU making that decision is the most sensible option, there may be a couple of hold-ups.
Firstly, the EU hasn’t officially even ruled that Microsoft has done anything wrong yet, so it can’t publicly decide any sanctions at the moment.
Secondly, one of Microsoft’s more recent legal tactics over the case has been to argue that the EU can only rule that its behavior has breached the rules and that it’s legally down to Microsoft to decide how it rectifies the problem. (Whether that’s true hasn’t been tested in court yet.)