News Bundled Firefox not the "right outcome"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2009/02/10/bundled-firefox-not-the-right-outcome/1

Speaking regarding the EU's decision that Microsoft's browser bundling was an abuse of monopoly, architect Mike Connor claims that bundling Firefox is "not the right outcome."

 

Spot on quote. Especially with the more recent versions. I used to think it was a great little browser.

 

i can see some of his concerns about it being a wrong move for Firefox

Currently firefox is the main competitor to IE and it keeps growing at the expense of IE because every man and his dog reccomend it to everyone including websites (saying its best to use IE or FF etc or use FF if you have issues in IE etc etc) while a small amount of people recomend changing to Opera or any other browser on the windows platform

as a result awareness of alternate browsers besides say FF and to a lesser extent Chrome (which only has such a large market share because its backed by google nd thats a house hold name) is rather small in the general populace

now if new users upon getting their new computers get a prompt with a list of several different browsers then that WILL cut into market share for IE as well as FF imo simply because the non tech crowd will pick whatever sounds best tot hem be it Opera or Safari or FF or IE, and being non tech savvy they will just stick with said browser unless something doesnt work for them since they all work fine for your general non techy person

so if this happens instead of say 5 million people installing FF on the word of a friend or website due to lack of browser awareness you will get that 5 million spred amoung browsers giving a marketshare boost to other browsers and taking away potential Firefox Users

not to mention with a boost in users for the FF competition they will have to work much harder to diferentiate themselves in the marketplace to those non tech people or lose the revenue the users may generate for them etc and that revenue gain for the other companies will give them a boost and provide even tougher competition for FF

no company wants that to happen even if they arent evil , a corporation is still a corporation at the end of the day

 

At the very most, when you install a copy of Windows and log onto the Internet, there should be a box that pops up that asks you which browser you wish to use, with links to download them, but that's it. Bundling multiple competiting applications with an OS would be an awful move. We're trying to cut down on bloat ware, not increase it.

 

I think that the browser should be done similar to how Windows Live Messenger is done in Vista. I.E. instead of installing the program there is a link in the start menu (in the case of WLM "Windows Live Messenger Download") where instead of opening IE when you click "Internet" it instead comes up with a first-time-use list of the browsers (by all means M$ can have IE at the top of the list, that doesn't matter) with IE, FF, Opera, Chrome and Safari listed which download the required installer.

The problem with not bundling a browser at all is you can't visit the webpage to download the browser of your choice!

Also, it may just be a GUI thing, but I always get the impression that Windows Explorer is built on Internet Explorer (or vice versa, this being demonstrated when IE6 crashes in XP it takes Windows Explorer with it! IE7 solved this by separating the processes) Wouldn't this cause problems with the file browser if M$ is told not to bundle IE?

 

I see your point however I think there is a small problem, should MS bundle other browsers with Windows, they will surely still have IE as the Recommended option, which again means that most non-techy users will choose it, those who are "techy" enough to know that IE is bad have probably only heard of FF, and hence will install that.
I think there will be very few non-techy users who randomly chose a different browser than the one an installation recommends. How many "normal" users use the custom/advanced install options when they install programs?

 

Not particularly interested in this article, however I am very disappointed to find that my favorite tech site is now using hover over advertising (the vibrant system that highlights the operating system text in this article). It's one of the reasons i use bit-tech as I didn't have to put up with off putting and unwanted popups. Please get rid of them, it's a truly rubbish idea.

 

Either they got rid of it very quickly or it doesn't work in IE, because I can't see any hover over advertising.

 

This statement is logically flawed in at least two ways. Firstly, what constitutes "logging onto the Internet"? Most Internet connections these days are of the "always on" type, which makes it hard to pinpoint that special moment, where you log on. Secondly, if you've pinpointed the moment you log on and that box is supposed to pop up you would need an existing browser to follow those links you've described. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Don't get me wrong, I'm very much pro choice, but I'm not sure forbidding the bundling of IE with Windows is the way forward.

 

He's talking carp about Opera - there are too many options on the screen as default, but it's a lot more streamlined than Firefox is for most stuff.

 

Why not just have it as one of the configuration options as windows boots for the first time.

 

Good point - It's there in Firefox 3, but not IE6.

TBH, I didn't even notice it the first time I read it.

 

I have no idea what hover-over adverts you're talking about. FF 3.1 B2 on Windows 7 here and none of these little buggers shows up for me.

Anyways, bundling is bad as we all have seen with other tools. WinAmp, DaemonTools [for Christ's sake I don't want your crappy toolbar!], Adobe Reader [they stopped doing that by now], ...

 

Cebla 'mainstream' retail-level operating systems, the "operating systems" is a hover over advertisement, its under the picture for me in ie7

 

i think a major point is being missed by many people. Normal users don't ever see the installation process for Windows unless they're game enough to reformat. They just buy a computer with OEM Windows already installed, or get someone else to install it for them. Hence the entire argument of whether or not a list of browsers for installation pops up during Windows install is fairly pointless (except for the cases of people like us). Chaos's suggestion of providing a similar system to Windows Live Messenger seems to be the most sensible from a normal user's point of view, but the fact is much of the computing population couldn't give a rats arse what browser they're using, as long as they can get to google, facebook etc.

Also, slightly related note, why is this argument being limited to Windows only? OSX bundles Safari, and Safari is much more a part of OSX than IE is in Windows - to change your default browser in OSX you do it through Safari, rather than either the "Default Programs" control panel or from the desired browser itself in Windows.

RE: hover-over ads, I can't see them here under FF3 or TB2

 

definitely there, definitely bad.

I don't think they could really do anything like bundling all the competitive browsers effectively, as people have said, it would just increase bloat, bad. Also, if you have a load of non-up to date browsers that you don't use, you just need an exploit that uses one of them for all kinds of problems to appear.

Opera mobile is very good btw, I thoroughly recommend it.

 

i just checked ff3, they are there, paragraph 4, bout half way

 

There is a tread discussing the intelitxt over here, come rant.

 

I think the real solution is for M$ to change the integration methods of IE so that the render engine and associated tools is modular so if/when a person want to change the default engine (IE) they can remove it completely. Of course this would involve M$ providing full and frank disclosure of those methods and necessitate major rewrites of any browser that wanted to work like this but it would be the ideal solution.

 

I don't see hover ad in FF3 and I have ABPlus turned off for Bit-tech and other sites I frequently visit. What's the big deal anyway, maybe they need the money? Times are tough for these sorts of outfits. I expect many longtime tech sites may not survive the year. I hope bit-tech does.

I don't think the whole IE thing matters. IE7 is much more secure than previous versions. I don't use it ever, only FF, even at work, but no browser will ever be totally secure. As long as they keep patching, I don't care what the non-techies use. That said, on all my families computers, I go and dl and install FF without even asking them and tell them to use it, making it the default. Then I remove all the shortcuts to IE. I tell them it's for their own good and since I'm the most tech knowledgeable in the family, they just trust me. I'm not worried about FF's market share anymore. 20% is darn good considering the hurdles it took to get there. I remember my old Packard Hell in the early 90's came with a dozen links to Compuserve, AOL, and a bunch of other dialup services, the bloatware was ridiculous. I use Nlite now to strip my Windows installs, but I would prefer the bloat of extra browsers, links, whatever not be theree in the first place.