Posts Tagged with “Microsoft”

This potential principle has received the most criticism from the Mozilla community to date; there appears to be little support for this principle as a basis from legal requirements from the EC.  This is quite different from agreeing that:

• Microsoft *should* implement critical web standards; and that
• the web has been, and continues to be, held back by the lack of good standards support in IE.

In fact, the ongoing drag on the web’s functionality caused by IE’s limitations remains an enormous problem.  We agree on the problem.

The concern is that regulating compliance with standards is fraught with negative side effects and it’s hard to see how to avoid them.  To start with, the standards in question would need to be identified.  Opera points out that Microsoft has itself identified some standards but having Microsoft determine the standards doesn’t serve as a long term solution.  Second, this principle would put enormous stress on the standards-setting process.  This process is difficult in any case, with a variety of different players trying to agree on technical direction and specification.  If Microsoft is legally required to implement a specification, then it is hard to see the process ever coming to a conclusion.  Third, there is the question of how one determines compliance with a standard.  Implementations almost always have bugs, some are serious, some are in the nature of the process.  Someone would need to test and evaluate.  Setting that up is complex and may well be a bad precedent.

Over 90% of the personal computer operating systems in the world are Windows.  As a result, application developers often use Microsoft tools to help write programs that work with Windows, and with related technologies or products that are integrated or often used with Windows.  Microsoft has a history of using its tools to lock out other products. For example, Microsoft web development tools  have often resulted in code that only works with IE.  The application developers may or may not even be aware of this.  They use a convenient tool provided by the operating system vendor, and end up helping extend the operating system monopoly to other products.

Examples of  tools to which this principle would apply include Microsoft Expression Web and Microsoft Office Sharepoint.  One might also include Silverlight and related development tools, or tools that do things such as embed MS Office documents in web pages.

This principle asserts that Microsoft cannot cause web or application developers to create IE-specific content by default.

I’ve been traveling and on vacation the last couple of weeks and so have been silent here. There are a couple more posts about the EC I want to turn to, interspersed with some other topics.

As to the EC, the potential principles I haven’t yet addressed are below. In addition, I want to address why I believe there are significant competitive issues even though Firefox is gaining marketshare.

• Microsoft must educate people about other browsers (or fines levied against Microsoft should be used to support open source projects and education).
• Microsoft tools for developing content must not produce IE specific or Windows-specific results.
• IE must comply with web standards. (Opera has suggested that Microsoft must support web standards they have promised to support).

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.

(This distribution channel is *so* valuable that Microsoft’s early efforts to promote IE in the 1990′s included threatening the OEMs with the loss of their ability to ship Windows (and thus the end of their business) if the OEMs didn’t ship IE exclusively. This practice stopped after the US judicial system determined a set of these sorts of practices to be illegal.)

Historically, software vendors generated revenue on upgrades and the licensing of subsequent and additional products. Today the models are diverse and complex, and may also include revenue-sharing between OEMs and software or service providers. For example, if you use a desktop search functionality, chances are high that the company you bought the machine from is getting a piece of revenue from the search provider.

This principle does not challenge these general business models. Like the other remedies, it is tied to the monopoly status of Windows, which requires all PC OEMs to work with Microsoft. In addition these programs cannot be matched by others because the Windows monopoly gives Microsoft a raft of unique tools. This principle prohibits the use of those tools to promote IE in ways that are unavailable to other browser manufacturers. It asserts that Windows monopoly status cannot be tied to financial incentives that further damage browser competition. Some examples of what this might mean are below.  There are undoubtedly many others.

• pricing of windows cannot vary based on whether IE is included or not
• payment for search/ad revenue or other service based revenues must not be conditional on IE being the browser.
• co-marketing efforts or amounts cannot vary based on the status of IE
• no financial incentives for OEMs to include links to IE anywhere in Windows

A complication of this principle is that it’s difficult to understand the complex relationships between Microsoft and the OEMs. There are a lot of details involved. It could be that one would agree intellectually, but find oneself unable to implement effectively. That’s again why I’ve separated out principles from remedies and implementation.

In summary, the OEM channel provides a way for a company with a lot of cash to pay to close off competition. This principle asserts that  a monopoly position plus the ability to pay to foreclose competition in related functionality is too much.

Some examples of what this might mean in practice summarized below from the earlier post.

• Option to download other browsers must be presented when a user is updating IE or Windows.
• IE may not become the default browser except in specified legitimate circumstances.
• Windows must ship with alternative browsers installed and offer users a choice.
• Windows must ship with a mechanism for downloading and installing a user’s browser choice.
• Windows may not include a browser (”untying” required).

Another way of thinking about this is : How much distribution advantage can Windows provide to IE? If one answers “as much as Microsoft wants with no limits” then this principle wouldn’t be implemented. If one answers “Windows can’t provide any distribution advantage to IE” then one would likely end up supporting a remedy that requires Windows to install a browser separately, based on a consumer’s decisions. If one answers “some” then one look to a of “must carry” remedy; a remedy that has been reported as of interest to the EC. Or one might look to some of the other options listed above.

One complication is the balance between encouraging competition and encouraging ease-of-use for the consumer. One might believe that a monopoly product like Windows should not provide any distribution advantage to IE, and yet simultaneously question whether an operating system without a web browser makes sense. Intellectually the principle might be right, but the remedy hard on consumers. I suspect many in the Mozilla world find ourselves looking at this dilemma.

Another complication is Microsoft’s long history and impact within the computer industry. Some of us have lived with Microsoft’s dominance for many cycles of the industry. To this group, the newer participants who believe Microsoft is a reasonable company that behaves within normal parameters are naive. To the new participants, the old-timers are weighted down by history and baggage and don’t see today clearly. It’s difficult to cross this divide.

One thing is clear. The ubiquity of Windows has meant the ubiquity of IE. As a result, millions of people believe that the blue “e” icon on their desktop IS the Internet. Changing that is a long, hard job. And until we do we magnify the difficulty of bringing competition to the browser space.