Microsoft ordered to offer Web Browser choice

The beginning of March and the blossom of spring is upon us, which means a lot of changes are imminent, but none may be more significant in the online world than the new ‘ballot screen’ that is soon to be launched by Microsoft.

On Monday the European Commission (EC) announced that Microsoft where to allow its users a choice of web browsers when surfing the internet through its Windows operating system. Currently, any new PC purchased anywhere around the world that comes with Windows will have a pre-installed version of Microsoft’s web browser Internet Explorer. This has been deemed to be unfair by the EC as it allows Microsoft to dominate the market.

Originally the complaint that led to action being taken against Microsoft was made by ‘Opera’ a Norwegian company that offers its own operating system. The complaint was lodged back in 2007 where they insisted that bundled Internet Explorer software with Windows gives Microsoft an unfair advantage. They are of the belief that if users are given a choice of operating systems then they are most likely to try and quite often settle on another browser.

As a result, this week, users of Windows XP, Vista or 7, that have Internet Explorer will whisked off to a ‘ballot screen’ page that will offer them the choice of 12 different browsers (who knew there were that many?)

The main five: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox and Opera will inevitably be positioned at the top in random orders allowing people to choose which browser they fancy.

It is great news for especially, Apple, Google and Mozilla as they evidently will be the main beneficiaries of this action. Microsoft, however, must be smarting from the announcement as they stand to loose a fair chunk of their 62% domination of the browser market. So it would seem that surfing the web will come with a brand new conundrum, which browser to choose?

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