Microsoft and EU Resolve Browser Argument
Following the legal action taken by Opera, Microsoft and the EU have agreed that a separate dialogue offering a choice of alternative browsers will appear by the installation of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
The Norwegian browser specialists Opera, took their grievances to the EU Commission in December 2007. Yesterday's decision means that Opera, Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari can, with one click, be set as default browser during the Windows installation. Other, mostly free browsers, can also be chosen as standard browser via an additional dialogue.
Since the last concrete proposals in October, only some small details have changed: the choice of browser will no longer be presented in a traditional Internet Explorer window, but in a more or less neutral dialog, and the list of browsers will appear in random order and not alphabetically.
The rules will take affect in the EU and some additional countries from the middle of March 2010 at the earliest. This gives Microsoft time to modulate their operating systems. The list of available alternative browsers will, according to the commission's report, be kept constantly up to date.
Issue 239/2020
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