Browser ballot already hurting Internet Explorer market share

The first few weeks of the browser ballot, Microsoft's solution to put an end to the EU antirust case, has already resulted in Redmond's browser losing market share to its rivals, according to web stats firm StatCounter.

In France, IE usage has dropped by 2.5 percent, Italy by 1.3 percent, and the UK by 1 percent. Browser developers Opera and Mozilla have reported strong growth within Europe, with Opera claiming that downloads have doubled since the ballot was introduced, and a Mozilla spokesperson claiming, "We have seen significant growth in the number of new Firefox users as a result of the Ballot Choice screen :As the ballot is rolled out across the rest of Europe, Mozilla expects further gains to be made.

The ballot isn't universally popular. Although 12 browsers are offered, only the top five are immediately accessible. The remaining seven are only visible after scrolling horizontally. As the seven minority browsers expected, their presence in the ballot has done little to boost their market share. A spokesman for the Flock browser said, "To date, new downloads of Flock originating from the browser choice screen have only contributed marginally to growth in overall downloads. This is also the case for the other browsers not on the main screen."

The remaining browsers have petitioned the EU to try to get the ballot changed. For its part, Microsoft still maintains that the browser ballot is compliant with the EU's demands. With some 200 million European users due to be shown the choice screen, and the benefits of being included becoming increasingly clear, time is clearly of the essence for the seven smaller browsers.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Microsoft rivals push to send browser ballot on world tour

The lobbying group European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) today called on antitrust regulators worldwide to follow the European Commission and pressure Redmond into offering a browser ballot, similar to what the company began serving yesterday to European customers via Windows Update, everywhere. The ballot is offered to consumers on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

ECIS members include Adobe Systems, Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. It was Norwegian browser maker Opera that first filed a complaint with the European Union in December 2007, accusing Microsoft of violating EU antitrust law by bundling IE with Windows. And the company isn't satisfied yet. "Opera is a member of ECIS, which supported the complaint to the European Commission because it promoted the ECIS core values of competition, interoperability and consumer choice," reads a statement in an ECIS press release today. "Microsoft agreed to change its business practices in the face of formal charges from the Commission. Consumers deserve the same unbiased browser choice on all the world's more than 1 billion personal computers." Of course, Opera doesn't rule the ECIS alone, but given that the lobbying group is mainly composed of Microsoft rivals, we doubt any of them would object to Opera's proposition.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has dismissed the ECIS' call to arms. "The issues in the Internet Explorer case have already been the subject of extensive legal action in several other countries around the world, including the United States, which have each developed their own legal solutions which are different than the browser choice screen pursued by the European Commission after years of litigation," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars.

Microsoft is not obligated to take the ballot screen outside the boundaries of the EU, but the push from ECIS could spur other consumer groups, competition agencies, and antitrust regulators to band together against the software giant. It worked in Europe, but will it work in the rest of the world?

Source: Arstechnica.com

EU seeks Street View picture purge

Google has had a very tough month in the EU, and it isn't getting any better. So far, its executives have been convicted in Italian courts and an investigation has been launched into whether the company's search rankings are anticompetitive. Now, a different service has found itself in the crosshairs of European regulators: Street View. The EU has been uneasy about Street View from the very beginning, and several Europeans nation has taken action against it. For Street View, this week has been déjà vu all over again.

On the continental level, the Associated Press obtained a letter from EU regulators to Google in which they expressed concern about the company's retention policy for Street View images (Reuters is reporting this as well). It's undoubtedly fairly expensive to completely crawl a city or country, which would make it advantageous to retain images for as long as possible. The downside to this is that the images can go stale—buildings are torn down, new ones built, and businesses come and go. Google has apparently decided, undoubtedly after running the numbers through one algorithm or another, that its ideal retention time for Street View images is a year.

As far as the EU is concerned, that's way too long. Its letter to Google requested that the company shorten the retention period from a year to six months. Concerns were also raised about whether the search giant needs to retain unblurred images internally. The EU would also like to see an improved warning system for areas that will be imaged, with Google paying for notifications in local newspapers.

On the national level, Germany has also raised a number of concerns about the service, but the company will apparently launch the service this year. Despite the host country's uneasiness about Street View, the AFP quotes a member of Google's legal team in Germany as saying, "It is difficult to forbid a company to do something that is legal."

The AFP's author points out how the country's 20th century history might make it uneasy with a massive image database, given the extensive state surveillance that took place in East Germany, as well as the totalitarian regime that preceded it.

Regardless of the frequent local opposition, it's clear that Google views Street View as a valuable commodity, and intends to keep pushing it into as many countries as it can. But, given differing cultural views on privacy and vastly different legal structures, the approach that the EU would clearly like to take—fine tuning the parameters of the service, rather than an outright ban—may eventually make it difficult for Google to run the service on its own terms.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Microsoft's EU browser ballot approved, arrives March 1

After protracted legal wrangling with the EU, the Microsoft browser ballot is at last heading towards roll-out. The EU's complaint was that Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer made the browser market less competitive to the detriment of consumers. Wary of substantial fines and endless legal costs, the company eventually worked to settle with the Competition Commission last year. As part of this settlement agreement, it promised to stop prioritizing Internet Explorer. Microsoft's initial plan—to offer a version of Windows without any browser at all—was rejected. The solution agreed upon by both parties was instead to offer end-users a choice of browsers automatically.

The mechanism chosen for this was the so-called browser ballot; a selection of browsers will be shown to users, and the chosen browser will be installed and made the default. Initially using an alphabetic list, the ballot was then changed to show the browsers in a random order. With this decision made, the EU finally agreed that this would be the way forward, allowing the company to put to an end its European legal woes.

The ballot itself will be distributed to EU customers running Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, via Windows Update. Installing the update will, on Windows 7, unpin the IE icon from the taskbar, and then offer a selection of browsers. The five leading browsers—Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer—will be visible on the main selection screen, along with a further seven accessible by scrolling to the right.

The ballot will be offered on a limited basis in the UK, Belgium, and France, with full roll-out beginning on March 1. It will be pushed out as an automatic update (for those who have Windows Update set to install updates automatically), so those running Windows Update in its default, recommended, configuration will see the ballot automatically. The list of browsers offered will be updated every six months, to ensure that the five most widely-used browsers continue to be prioritized.

In addition to offering the browser ballot to existing Windows users, OEMs will be able to preinstall a browser of their choosing and also uninstall IE from machines shipping with Windows 7.

Source: Arstechnica.com