Yes, people were explaining in details how Microsoft’s case is different from Apple’s since “it has a dominant market position”. Well, then, I guess that’s what you are against now – you just prosecute them since they are dominant.

However, the rules must be the same, regardless of the market share of the company. The law should not discriminate against success. You say they broke the law while achieving that success? Fine, then prosecute them for that, if you can prove it, but what are you prosecuting them for? For the fact that IE is included with the operating system?

Now someone above has explained how IE integration with Windows is different (and thus very bad) from, say, Safari in MacOS or Firefox in Linux. But you forget one thing – this is a consumer product. As a consumer, I don’t care about technical details. When I buy a computer, I expect it to be functional and while I agree that a computer does not require a browser to function, there is no way I would buy a computer if no browser is installed. Most people won’t since Internet has become a part of our lives. And nobody is selling computers without a browser. Apple comes with Safari and Linux comes with Firefox.

So what’s your complaint, really? Why do you want Microsoft to sell a defective product – i.e. an OS without a browser? Or maybe you want them to include their competitors software? Why would they do that? Does anyone else do that? In any other type of business?

Moreover you don’t seem to understand one thing – however fashionable it is to blame Microsoft for everything, there simply is not that much difference between browsers – they all have the same interface (ok, some buttons have different names, so what), they all have tabs now, and they all have a search built-in. Maybe there are enthusiasts who use a lot of extensions and then Firefox is their only choice, but then these people know how to get what they want without the help of the EC. And I doubt they dominate the market. Myself, I don’t use any extensions and thus for me the only difference between browsers is the stuff I read in magazines regarding security. the actual browsing experience is really the same. Thus I would never pay for another browser – why would I if it does not bring anything better to me?

OK, Firefox is free (actually paid by Google, who gets money from all that annoying advertising I have to put up with, but ok, the ads won’t go away whatever browser I use). But if I had to buy a computer without a browser in it, how on Earth would I get Firefox? So that means you want to force Microsoft, or rather the OEMs to include the Firefox in their installations. By a EC decree or whatever. You call this competitive?

So this is the bottom line – you have a product which is not really superior and you want to use the court to push up your market share. The EC is happy to do this since in the process they get a lot of money as fines. I find it ridiculous. And definitely not idealistic or anything. So, while you can do whatever you have to do to survive, just don’t call yourself better or anything. You are not.