EU and IE Put Straight.

I think it's to do with controlling the online user experience. I know that the latest versions of IE have been fairly good, but to anyone who has been using it for years, it has been a pretty crap experience. I'll try to hunt down the title of a book that I read last year about the inception of Windows and particularly IE. The guy that created it was apparently given much more freedom than usual within MS and was actually pretty far-seeing for the time as he envisioned that a lot of what we would be doing would be on the web. Unfortunately, he was also allowed to write into the program a lot of system-fundamental code to achieve this, which led to IE being the primary route into the system for hackers and viruses.

Also, there is a lot of click-through revenue to be garnered from the likes of Google by including their search boxes (grudgingly forced to comply in Europe) which, whilst pocket change to MS is still hundreds of millions of dollars taken from a competitor every year.

The problem with browser choice is there are so many users that would be confused and frightened by the choice - many don't even know what a browser is, they think their computer is the Internet - that it would create a support nightmare. That's the main reason for wanting to pre-install and pre-configure as much as humanly possible.

Trouble with that is you are talking about ifs and buts. The EU and Microsoft are not; they are negotiating the legal trade aspects of the situation. I doubt very much that the reason Microsoft is keeping IE integrated is to help the users!

Besides, is it any harder to simply choose a browser during installation (or allow consumer deletion of the browser at least) than to operate the program itself?

I'm not au fait with Vista, so I don't know whether there is a 'consumer-friendly' way to delete IE there, but if they have changed it since XP, then surely this has a lot to do with political pressure of the sort exerted by the EU? Remember that this has been going on for about seven years now, if not longer. In fact, a lot of the new MS stuff that I like would likely never have been considered without such pressure.

As for Windows forcing me into IE for certain tasks, all I can say is that fairly often I come across this situation on my work XP lappie. The W7 beta would not download from Firefox for me and worked immediately from IE.

As for the updates, I have deleted Safari and never had a problem with Apple updates (as Safari is really a WebKit front-end). All the windows updates require the installation of the IE components to work, unless I'm mistaken (I may well be!).

And I'm glad that you haven't suggested (like some others) that I should use some fudge to get around the problem and just live with it.

Believe me, so would I. So, tell me again how to delete IE? In a way that normal users can understand?

Any takers?

So, Ive just deleted Safari by dragging it to the basket. Gone. Just gone to Remove Programs in Windows and....what's this?

All that the EU is asking is that they offer the choice.

But they are dumb, in the main.

The webkit framework is still there. If you remove that, OS X won't work.
You can delete iexplore.exe, but mshtml.dll is neccessary.

You are correct, but the WebKit framework is not Safari. In fact, it is the background for lots of browsers. The fact is that as online services become more and more important, the manner in which we access them is crucial. IE is still not web-compliant and most people believe it has the Market share it does at present due to user apathy and even ignorance. Indeed, when I spoke to Microsoft on telephone support, they advised against uninstalling IE as it could cause instability in the general OS!

I'm not against MS in general and I really want W7 to be great, but there's really no issue here for me. The EU is right.

But my point was IE is the same way, you can delete the program but you still need the dll's.
And webkit btw, is an apple run open source project, worked on by many of the same people as safari is, for all intents and purposes, it is safari, it's engine.

I don't use Vista, so maybe you can delete IE from the Add/Remove area on it, but you sure can't in XP (by the way, CAN you delete it like this in Vista?). There may be some geeky workaround, but come on! Besides, if MS really didn't have a reason for keeping it integrated, then they wouldn't make it so hard.

In any case, there's a fairly unpleasant implication coming across the pond here: the U.S. seems to view the European political and trade system as a kind of anarchic, trouble-causing rabble. It speaks volumes that despite their billions, Microsoft cannot delay or get these things thrown out of court. I suspect if you talked to the MS executives dealing with this case, you would get a different response than some of the U.S. chest-beating I'm getting (not from you, of course!). They're not really arguing the principle, if you actually take the time to look at the case. They are merely negotiating more time to carry out the extraction (as well as a few smaller details).

'Apple-run open source'? The key words are 'open' and 'source'. The project is shared by many and by definition cannot be used to lever an advantage from non-proprietary tech. It makes me laugh that some of the very people that (rightly) rail against Apple (a U.S. company, let's not forget!) for their iTunes obstinacy, feel compelled to fight the good MS fight on almost exactly the same moral ground! I think the old adage is true here: people believe what they want to believe and to hell with the facts.

You are wrong about WebKit being an integral part of OS X. It is merely a standard, and is used by many browsers. MSHTML is proprietary and cannot be removed.

The Linux thing is a little weird too: all these elements like Gecko, Firefox and even KDE can be altered, removed, replaced or kept as much or as little as you want. And since the vast majority of Linux is free (in all senses) how can the EU have a problem with that? This is a trade issue.

As for not having a browser to download a browser, I think you've answered your own question there bud! As you've correctly noted, you don't need a browser per-se to connect to a download, do you?!

I am apple fanboy actually. And I think both IE and iTunes should be left alone by governments... Well unless they force iTunes to remove DRM for videos.

Also, refering to your above comments. Webkit is an apple owner and run open source project. And is an essential part of OS X, without it many apps would simply not work.

....but the fact remains that you don't have to run Safari with it. Another browser can run on it and recoup the financial and infrastructural rewards. And as far as A. N. Other consumer is concerned, I still maintain that the way Microsoft has worked it, it is geared toward just keeping IE on there.

As an Apple fanboy, you will remember when Apple were forced to introduced IE on to Mac because webmasters simply weren't supporting anything else. Where is IE on Mac now? As soon as Apple began even the slightest development on their own, MS dropped IE Mac like a stone. If Apple weren't as well funded as they were, they could have been in real trouble (or not in a position to carry on without IE anyway). It's this kind of strong-arming that gets on my **** with MS. I suppose it's fine when it's someone like Apple, but look at the way they've been funding SCO vs Novell to try to stuff Linux. Nothing like good old fair competiton, eh?

I don't want MS to go under; I quite like the way they are at the minute with their hair-brained schemes, but they do remain anti-competitive business-wise. The idea that the free Market will automatically regulate the influence of MS is peculiarly American, and has taken a battering in the last 18 months if you ask me.