Will Microsoft's browser engine backfire?

[Tweaker]

Microsoft may have unwittingly started a revolt against its Internet Explorer (IE) browser by discontinuing it as a standalone product and blurring the future of the current version, IE 6.

Earlier this month, Microsoft admitted it would not release any new versions of IE as a standalone browser. Instead, the software giant said that the next version of IE will be an integrated part of the Windows operating system. The first signs of trouble came when IE programme manager Brian Countryman let it slip in a 7 May online chat that IE6 "is the final standalone installation" of the browser, which is used by more than 90 percent of Web surfers.


So If one of the sites I need requires IE 6 and another requires the Longhorn version, I'll need to keep 2 machines to use the Web sites?

And when there is a security problem will I need to patch the OS? Just when I thought they couldn't shoot themselves in the foot anymore, they turn around and load up the gun again.

More on this story here.

[degsy]

I thought all the law suits meant they had to do the opposite?

[smurfy]

said that if banks' customers turn to other browsers instead of upgrading to the latest version of Windows, then developers and banks and other large e-commerce operations may be forced to start more standards-based code to support those browsers in preference to IE.

WOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!!

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2135615,00.html
The antitrust angle
The degree to which Microsoft's browser and operating system were linked became a central point of contention in the government's antitrust lawsuit against the company.

The government sued Microsoft in 1998, alleging that the software giant had used its monopoly power in desktop operating systems to develop a chokehold on browser software. A federal judge agreed and ordered the company to be broken up into separate application and operating system companies to prevent future abuses. That order was later overturned on appeal, and Microsoft eventually worked out a settlement that leaves it free to develop the OS as it sees fit.

In its defence against the charge it illegally tied the browser to its monopoly operating system, Microsoft argued that the operating system could not function properly without the Web browser.

Now Microsoft has flipped its argument around, claiming that future versions of the browser won't be able to function properly without the OS.

"Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1 (Service Pack 1, a collection of bug fixes and updates to the browser)," Countryman said. "Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS."

Antitrust experts said that because the appeals court had found, on a technicality, that the government had failed to prove IE commanded a monopoly, Microsoft's move to remove stand-alone IE from the market wouldn't run afoul of any restrictions placed on the company by the courts.

The courts forbade Microsoft from refusing to offer a version of Windows without IE, antitrust lawyers pointed out. But the company remains free to offer IE only bundled with a $199 copy of Windows.

"They have to let OEM licensees, HP or whoever, put Netscape or another browser on the other computer and have it work with Windows," said Richard Liebeskind, a partner with Pillsbury Winthrop, who worked for both the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice on antitrust issues. "I don't know that there's any obligation to make (Internet) Explorer, because it's not the product Microsoft has been found to have monopolised. The government lost that part of the case -- Microsoft got off on a technicality."

Perhaps paradoxically, the removal from the market of IE as a separate product makes reality conform with Microsoft's long-time defence against charges that it tied the browser and the OS.

"Obviously, having a separate product out there prolonged the argument that there were two products that would form the basis of an unlawful tie," said Ostrau. "This gets rid of one pesky aspect of the case. It brings to the inevitable conclusion what Microsoft had in mind all along. And it won't be the last time that this occurs. Windows is like Los Angeles -- it likes to annex a lot of outlying areas over time."

Asked where another stand-alone Microsoft application might disappear from the market, Ostrau advised, "Watch what happens with the media player."

[Steven.Bentley]

this would be the standards compliant Microsoft browser that is happy with typos in HTML, even with a strict DTD applied to the document?

<img scr="whatever.jpg"> works, certainly in the Mac version :no: