Oh there is so much in this thread that has had me annoyed overnight.
As you'll know, Microsoft aren't shipping Internet Explorer with Windows 7 in some European countries
Er, no actually. That idea
was ditched in August after the EU said the ballot screen was an acceptable compromise.
Dr Lobster* wrote:even xp mode is a seperate download...
Secondly, Windows XP Mode, if I am not mistaken, is a separate download because
1 - it was finished AFTER the RTM of Win 7 therefore couldn't be included (perhaps it will be in SP1)
2 - given it's complex hardware virtualisation requirements maybe they thought it best to prevent confusion by making investigation a requirement to install it.
As for the browsers themselves, I think there are two major problems with the discussion of this issue.
Firstly there is Opera. Opera is acting like a bitter spoiled brat who cannot accept that their complex and niche product is not gaining traction because its very complex for most users. Firefox, Safari and Chrome all have much simpler and smaller featuresets that do not baffle users.
Secondly, I think people sometimes think "oh but Firefox has 15% and Safari 5% what's the whole problem?"
To understand this better you need to recall what the web was like in 2004. Back then, IE6 dominated and MS decided they couldn't be arsed updating it any longer so it would just sit there.
So essentially, we had a browser that had 95% market share, and is incapable of displaying the logo on this site properly.
Now in addition to that, the way that it was tied in to windows (pre-vista / pre- XPSP2) led to it constantly decreeing itself the default. It demanded to be set default every time you opened Windows Update (which as Lobster says, was rather silly when it ran inside a browser window). It triggered from links in office and MSN rather than those apps obeying the actual default browser and every minor patch for widows seemed to restore the icon on the desktop.
Indeed lets not forget this is the browser that was originally designed and incorporated to destroy Netscape, and whilst admittedly was superior to Netscape for many years, once it won, just rotted.
Now since then things have improved significantly partly due to people becoming so sick of IE6 that Firefox really took off. IE7 was a response to Firefox let's not forget. So we now have a healthier ecosystem where IE7 and IE8 have reasonable rendering ability and the minority browsers have acceptable market share.
So why does this matter, as Phil asks. Well think of how important the web is to modern computing. Imagine using Facebook on Netscape 4, or gmail, or google maps. What happened when there was no competition was the web was held back. Even today IE6 is an annoying stain on the internet and things have to be tweaked to make perfectly coded sites work in it because of its odd quirks.
Try to remember back again. Websites often said they only worked in IE. Now how exactly is that acceptable? You are completely banning all Macs from using the internet (what do you use again phil?) and making other browsers jump through hoops to emulate bizzare quirks in IE rather than actually use the specs like they're designed.
Microsoft does have a major stronghold on the computer business. And do you know, I don't mind that so much, I like Windows, I think that despite some iffy tactics by MS in the past it is a damn good OS and deserves to have a good market share.
However even after winning the original browser war they continued to make use of their OS to destroy competition and prevent other browsers from actually working and by doing so, held back the web. Just because this was in 2004 isn't a reason not to punish them. Yes, I raped your daughter but it was five years ago so lets not bother with court. Er no.
For further reading on the problem of browser monopolies and the damage they cause to their users, google South Korea SEED encryption
