Comments on: EC Principle 4: Microsoft’s financial and other incentives to distributors must be browser-neutral

By: Asa Dotzler

Asa Dotzler — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:23:41 +0000

Jonas, yes, you’re reading that correctly. Microsoft may not punish OEMs for offering an alternative browser. They did this back in the 90s to vendors that wanted to ship Netscape.

- A

By: Jonas Sicking

Jonas Sicking — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:31:19 +0000

By “pricing of windows cannot vary based on whether IE is included or not” I assume that you mean that microsoft must not charge *less* for windows *with* IE included? I.e. they are not allowed to punish people/OEMs for opting out of IE.

Is this a correct interpretation?

By: Ian M

Ian M — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:03:52 +0000

I’m particularly concerned about services being bundled with IE now – just installed IE8 on a company machine for testing purposes, and it bundles lots of Microsoft services by default.

It doesn’t change your search provider if it’s set to someone else (e.g. Google), but it includes Windows Live services by default for blogging, translation, mapping and email. This is a major issue!

I think that we also need to allow OEMs to include non-Microsoft services even if they ship IE, and have the same sorts of principles apply (e.g. anyone can pay to be made the default search provider, translation provider, blog provider, etc).

This looks like a serious attempt by Microsoft to grab web market share, which could eventually lead to yet another monopoly. They are certainly using their monopoly position to gain web services market share.

By: Boycott Novell » Microsoft’s Very Own “Death Spiral” (on the Web)

Boycott Novell » Microsoft’s Very Own “Death Spiral” (on the Web) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:48:12 +0000

[...] “Microsoft has already suspended plans to build a datacentre in Iowa…”Returning to Bloomberg, Bass also wrote this article about Microsoft trying to sneak its way into search using agreements (probably a reference to buying exclusivity, i.e. buying one’s way to market share). Mozilla complained about this tactic only a couple of days ago (direct link). [...]

By: Boycott Novell » Links 21/03/2009: GNU/Linux Advances; Free Software Prioritised in Germany

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:24:08 +0000

[...] EC Principle 4: Microsoft’s financial and other incentives to distributors must be browser-neutral Microsoft has also used a range of techniques to encourage the distribution channel (often known as “the OEMs” for “original equipment manufacturers”) to ship IE. The OEM distribution channel is a funny thing. When I started working in this industry I assumed that the OEMs would pay software vendors for the right to distribute a piece of valuable software. But it turns out that’s backwards. The software maker pay the OEMs to include software on the OEM’s machine. So first the vendor makes the software, then they pay someone else to distribute it. The OEMs get to include software in their distribution packages for less-than-free — they make money by including software. This is because the distribution channel — the ability to actually get human beings to look at a piece of software — is so valuable. Software vendors end up paying for their products to reach people, and hoping to make money afterwards. For many product-focued people I think it is hard to internalize just how critical the ability to get people to pay attention to the product is, and how “distribution” can outweigh product quality in building success. [...]