Microsoft caught red-handed
Some of you know that I will never choose to use a Microsoft product if other software will do the job. (And if no other software can do the job, I'll question whether the job really needs to be done. Or whether it needs to be done by me.) This incident is another example of why I don't like and don't trust Microsoft. They don't play fair.
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1085422002.html
Opera gets US$12.75 million settlement from Microsoft
Posted 05/24/2004 @ 1:06 PM
by Eric Bangeman
Last week Opera Software (makers of the Opera browser for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X) announced they had entered into a settlement with a large company, but did not name the company [or] provide details on what the settlement covered. Now, sources are reporting that Microsoft is the party behind the payout. Opera had threatened Microsoft with a lawsuit over incompatibilities between their flagship product, Opera 7 and Microsoft's MSN. The incompatibilities were allegedly due to a browser-specific style-sheet sent to surfers browsing the MSN website with Opera, which then caused MSN to render improperly on Opera 7. If Opera identified as a Mozilla-based browser, the pages would render just fine.
Microsoft in 2003 admitted that it had taken steps to detect different types of browsers accessing MSN and sent different Web page layouts to different products. But the company said its efforts were aimed at promoting standards compliance rather than at hurting products that compete with its dominant Internet Explorer browser.
Copyright © 1998-2004 Ars Technica, LLC
Microsoft has a poor history of "promoting standards compliance" when it's other people's standards. When a page doesn't display properly, I try another browser. (I seem to have at least 9.) If it's a page that's important to me, that browser may drop out of use. But in this case, the browser didn't fail because of inadequate software design or implementation; it failed because it has been targeted by the site. That is not playing fair.
If a company wants to conquer the world by providing a better product at a competitive price, that's great. But deliberately crippling your competitors' products is not good karma. And using monopoly clout to keep competing, superior technologies from ever seeing the light of day is not progress.
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1085422002.html
Opera gets US$12.75 million settlement from Microsoft
Posted 05/24/2004 @ 1:06 PM
by Eric Bangeman
Last week Opera Software (makers of the Opera browser for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X) announced they had entered into a settlement with a large company, but did not name the company [or] provide details on what the settlement covered. Now, sources are reporting that Microsoft is the party behind the payout. Opera had threatened Microsoft with a lawsuit over incompatibilities between their flagship product, Opera 7 and Microsoft's MSN. The incompatibilities were allegedly due to a browser-specific style-sheet sent to surfers browsing the MSN website with Opera, which then caused MSN to render improperly on Opera 7. If Opera identified as a Mozilla-based browser, the pages would render just fine.
Microsoft in 2003 admitted that it had taken steps to detect different types of browsers accessing MSN and sent different Web page layouts to different products. But the company said its efforts were aimed at promoting standards compliance rather than at hurting products that compete with its dominant Internet Explorer browser.
Copyright © 1998-2004 Ars Technica, LLC
Microsoft has a poor history of "promoting standards compliance" when it's other people's standards. When a page doesn't display properly, I try another browser. (I seem to have at least 9.) If it's a page that's important to me, that browser may drop out of use. But in this case, the browser didn't fail because of inadequate software design or implementation; it failed because it has been targeted by the site. That is not playing fair.
If a company wants to conquer the world by providing a better product at a competitive price, that's great. But deliberately crippling your competitors' products is not good karma. And using monopoly clout to keep competing, superior technologies from ever seeing the light of day is not progress.