Opera's antitrust complaint against Microsoft from 2007 has now ballooned into a full-blown EU antitrust case into browser bundling. As you'd expect, this antitrust case isn't popular with everyone, and one Windows enthusiast website has launched campaign calling on users to boycott the Opera browser. Will you be boycotting Opera?
Opera's antitrust complaint against Microsoft from 2007 has now ballooned into a full-blown EU antitrust case into browser bundling. As you'd expect, this antitrust case isn't popular with everyone, and one Windows enthusiast website has launched campaign calling on users to boycott the Opera browser. Will you be boycotting Opera?
Here's what JCXP.net, the site calling for the boycott had to say:
Who is behind all of this? Opera Software, makers of the Opera web browser. In December of 2007, Opera pushed the EU to open a case against Microsoft as Opera believed it to be anti-competitive for Microsoft to include its own browser as the default browser within their own OS.
For some unknown reason, instead of combating the lawsuit, Microsoft decided to settle, and on Thursday announced that they would no longer include Internet Explorer in versions of Windows 7 (Microsoft's next operating system) sold in Europe, and would leave it up to OEM builders to decide which browser to install.
Well, things took a turn for the worse today when Opera made a statement saying this was not enough, and have now pushed the EU to pursue with the antitrust case. Opera believes the only reasonable solution is for Microsoft to include a "ballot screen" for users to select which browser to use.
That's enough. And it's time we do something about it.
Today, we are proposing a complete boycott of all Opera software.
This is absolutely nothing more than a company, who can't legitimately gain market share, trying to squeeze their unpopular browser onto Windows systems. Opera is simply upset because their browser is dead last in market share, and has already been surpassed by the recently released Google Chrome browser and Apple's Safari browser for Windows.
Microsoft is entirely within their right to include Internet Explorer as the default browser within their own OS, just like Apple includes their own Safari as the default browser in Mac OS X, and just like Opera Software would be free to include Opera as the default browser in their own OS, should they ever make one.
So, the question is this. Is Opera's whole stance based on wanting to give users a real choice of browsers, or is it about breathing new life into a browser that suffers from a very weak market share? Or, to put things another way, are you for or against the boycott? And if you are for the boycott, will you be eradicating Opera from all your PC and devices?
