Internet Browser wars heat up

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Norwegian browser maker Opera ASA said that Microsoft's plan to sell Windows operating system in Europe without its web browser was not enough to restore competition. Opera ASA brought the browser issue to the EU that started the anti-trust action.

Both Opera and Mozilla were hoping to be bundled in the news release of Windows 7 which should be on the shelves before the winter holidays.

On Thursday the world's top software maker Microsoft said it plans to ship Windows 7 in Europe without its Internet Explorer web browser. It hoped to side step anit-trust charges with this move.

Opera's Chief Technology Officer Hakon Wium Lie told Reuters, "I don't think its going to be enough, I don't think it will get them off the hook."

The European Commission is due to rule on antitrust charges brought against Microsoft last January. Anti-trust actions were dropped against Microsoft in the US after George W. Bush was elected president.

Netscape had always maintained that Microsoft was anti-competitive when it bundled Internet Explorer with Windows 98. Window 95 did not include an Internet browser. When Microsoft started bundling IE with the operating system, Netscape who invented one of the first commercial browsers lost its enterprise market.

Until now Microsoft has claimed that the browser was an integral part of the operating system and should not be pulled out. This was the same argument it used before a US federal court. It now plans to unbundle the browser for a European version of Windows 7 because the EU is less timid than the US about disciplining misbehaving corporate giants.

Opera said that if Microsoft's plan would have no impact on Internet Explorer's dominant role. Actually Microsoft has been losing it browser share of the market for a long time. Netscape morphed in an open source project called Mozilla and produced the excellent Firefox browser.

Mozilla just released a new beta of Firefox, version 3.5b4.  It is advertised as being twice as fast as the previous release. It can be downloaded form the following hyperlink:

www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Rightardia has tested the new Firefox release. It is fast!

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; editing by Mike Nesbit)

www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/community/columns/historyofie.mspx

www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55B1F220090612