Safari for Windows Receives Prominent Placement on Microsoft's European 'Browser Ballot'

[ox4dboy]

It's strategic and clever marketing.

IE is right in the middle...or so it appears. Really, the middle is the first choice. Most users (especially Windows users) do not know what Safari and Chrome are, so they will immediately skip past them and find their eyes resting comfortable on a familiar name - "Internet Explorer"

It'd go something link this:

?...?...Internet Explorer, "Oh I know that one..I used to have that on my old computer," (not realizing it is actually newer better browser) click...install...forget about other options.

I am surprise Firefox is not at the end...or that Opera is not thrown in with the mystery Safari, Chrome choices to confuse the user even more towards choosing what they already know in IE.

Safari(?), Opera(?), Chrome(?), IE(!), Firefox

 

[a cat *miaow*]

This brings us to a brilliant question... if Microsoft spends R&D money to develop Microsoft Windows and Microsoft wants to have their own Microsoft Internet Explorer featured as the default browser, why should anyone but Microsoft have anything to do with it?

I've never understood this. It's so true –*does this happen in any other industry? If Mozilla want's more influence on who installs their browser then do more work and develop a complete OS that's used by a vast amount of the population and put it on there by default.

And that random idea is plain stupid. I would say that the fairest way*–*and one they would not be allowed to do (for whatever reason) is putting it left to right by highest marketshare first. Yes, I hate IE but the preference for people who aren't as in the know about alternative browsers should be the one which most people use.

 

[batchtaster]

I've found this whole thing pathetic, if people wanted another browser to Internet Explorer then just go online and download one of preference. Not hard!

As some people have mentioned, why is Microsoft penalised and Apple are allowed to still provide Safari as standard.

You must be one o' them younguns.

Why back in my day, we had ourselves the Browser Wars. Worse than the Cold Wars they was. Ol' Microsoft, yeah, he used to stop all them upstart browsers from even showin' up in town. And even if they found their-selves a patch o' land, why that Microsoft'd be buttin' hisself in all the time, wouldn't let them have a moment's peace. Thought he was the sheriff, he did. That's when them Guv-o-mint O-fish-alls came to town. He said he was just bein' right neighbourly. But nobody in town dared question him. Even the tumbleweeds was scared to go up again'im. Then, some o' the townsfolk got their cuurrrrage up and said they wasn't happy. Mighty big shock to him. Wasn't the same again. Ah, thems was the days....

/dances an old timey grizzled miner jig.


In all seriousness, Microsoft is allowed to do with Microsoft products what they want. The problem is that they were found to be interfering with, and penalizing other people's products. People love to turn around and point at Apple and Safari, but Apple has never done anything even in the same stratosphere as the underhanded tricks Microsoft did to third-party browser vendors. And once you find yourself under that microscope, it's hard to get out from under it. The EU was particularly incensed by it, as they had more courage to go up against Microsoft than the US government did, thus the more stringent requirements in Europe. So, once again - it's not about IE, per se. It's about levelling the playing field so that other companies aren't consigned to a rat-infested, leaking-pipe basement while Microsoft is partying it up in the penthouse.

 

[elppa]

When will Apple give us the choice to not install Quicktime and iTunes?

Nothing would work without Quicktime: no iLife, no iWork, no Pro Apps. It's a key framework in OS X? It would be a major hinderance for 3rd party devs as well. So I'd rather Apple didn't give "us" the choice not to install Quicktime.

As far as I am concerned it is part of the toolkit of the OS. In the same way I have no problem with Core Video, Core Image, Core Text and Direct X on the Windows side. And nor should any regulator.

iTunes is slightly different, but it is trivial to remove.

 

[iSamurai]

Safari 'prominent'? Looks like IE8 is placed in the centre on that screenshot...

Oh, and if it should be fairer, they could just write a simple math.random code that generates the order randomly

 

[Bigdaddyguido]

Let it go. I thinks it obvious from her suggestion she is creatively trying to find some algorhythm that leads to ff being first. I seriously doubt it matters, it's a sad state of affairs but I think almost anyone who installs there own os knows more about one of those browsers than some of the random elected positions we vote for. So while in a vote for judge when I never have heard of either candidate and they can't list party affliation people find some random ways to make their choice. In this situation most people will stick with what they know, not go alphabetically.

As for those who are comparing these complaints to apple with safari, I think it's a little different for two reasons. 1) windows market share is huge so they can actually be a monopoly, apple can't. 2) more importantly currently IE is vital to windows, you cannot install updates without it unless your willing to make some adjustments to FF. This is different than safari in OS X which can be completely disabled in favor of FF I believe.

 

[fithian]

Safari works well in windoze

I can imagine no possible reason why someone would want Safari on a PC

Recently, I was forced to use bootcamp with my old mac mini and run xp in order to watch a sopcast version of a baseball game. The web page said to use IE, so I did, and while it worked for a while, it kept losing the stream, and my monitor showed a complete loss of video signal.

I tried Firefox with the same address and it eliminated the ad at the bottom of the screen and changed the view from 4:3 to 16:9. No dropping the stream this time although the picture did freeze on occasion.

Ever the adventurer, I downloaded Safari 4 for Windoze and installed it with quicktime, returning to the same address. This view was the same as Firefox, but when there was a loss os stream, it held the picture, and gave me one of those circular clock like things in the center of the screen, until the stream returned and then was back to normal.

So, I guess the order that MS gave was about right, except that IE should be moved to the far right.

 

[KALLT]

I've never understood this. It's so true –*does this happen in any other industry? If Mozilla want's more influence on who installs their browser then do more work and develop a complete OS that's used by a vast amount of the population and put it on there by default.

I basically agree with you on this. Microsoft should be exclusively allowed to decide which browser will be present on the OS. But you have to look at the circumstances in this specific situation.

The world wide web is becoming more important every day. More users are joining the internet, more websites are launched and new technologies are developed. The www has become a huge market by now and can only be reached via a browser. Windows dominates the OS market with more than 90%, and by including Internet Explorer, the browser market as well.

This led to several annoyances in the past. Internet Explorer 6 does not accept all web standards, is not safe and makes big mistakes when a website is rendered. Internet Explorer 7 is better, but still does not accept modern standards. Internet Explorer 8 often only works correctly when compatibility mode is enabled and fails the ACID3 test miserably. The conclusion is that this browser still dominates the market, although it is inferior to its competitors.

Usually the market would handle this by itself. Bad products are driven off by good products. This way only the best products survive. Since Internet Explorer is standard on Windows, Microsoft does not need to compete with Mozilla or others. While other browsers are developed further every day, you hardly see any news on Internet Explorer. In my opinion, Microsoft interferes too much with the development of the world wide web by doing nothing and abusing its market share. I am not saying that Internet Explorer is a bad browser, but it should compete with other browsers. This way browsers, and the entire world wide web, can be developed further.

Why adding this browser ballot? Most users do not even know what a browser is. They just click on the ‘internet icon’ and launch the browser. I bet most users never even heard of Firefox, despite its big market share and just use what is available. By using the ballot, many users can pick a browser themselves. As said before, Google could benefit a lot because it is a prominent name on the internet.

 

[KnightWRX]

I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that governmental bodies such as the EU and to a lesser extent the U.S. Justice Department have actually harmed consumers in their pursuit against Microsoft.

So they've harmed the consumer by trying to punish Microsoft for... harming the consumer ?

I doubt it seriously. Microsoft didn't just harm consumers, they halted the progress of the Web by trying to lock it into their platform. We're just now getting back on track, but the web lost a good 7-8 years of possible innovation because of Internet Explorer.

 

[kate-willbury]

Let it go. I thinks it obvious from her suggestion she is creatively trying to find some algorhythm that leads to ff being first. I seriously doubt it matters, it's a sad state of affairs but I think almost anyone who installs there own os knows more about one of those browsers than some of the random elected positions we vote for. So while in a vote for judge when I never have heard of either candidate and they can't list party affliation people find some random ways to make their choice. In this situation most people will stick with what they know, not go alphabetically.

As for those who are comparing these complaints to apple with safari, I think it's a little different for two reasons. 1) windows market share is huge so they can actually be a monopoly, apple can't. 2) more importantly currently IE is vital to windows, you cannot install updates without it unless your willing to make some adjustments to FF. This is different than safari in OS X which can be completely disabled in favor of FF I believe.

so basically all you're saying is apple is only 'innocent' because its not as big as microsoft. also i don't know what you're talking about but i receive windows 7 updates just fine and i haven't even opened IE once yet the entire time i've had windows 7 installed (i use firefox without whatever hacks you're talking about).

 

[opeter]

So they've harmed the consumer by trying to punish Microsoft for... harming the consumer ?

I doubt it seriously. Microsoft didn't just harm consumers, they halted the progress of the Web by trying to lock it into their platform. We're just now getting back on track, but the web lost a good 7-8 years of possible innovation because of Internet Explorer.

That is so true. Man... it is still the main problem, that many companys have nothing other, than IE6 installed on their machines. And the will be never updated because of different reasons.

 

[zwaldowski]

It seems to me they just organized them in alphabetical order by developer (or, maybe, "full name" like "Apple Safari"). Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera.

 

[0098386]

I'm glad Firefox isn't first. Has anyone used it recently? It's been my main browser under XP for the past couple of years but it crashes 5 or so times daily. It's a good idea they put a stable browser first.
Heh, I've had less problems with IE.

 

[OllyW]

I'm glad Firefox isn't first. Has anyone used it recently? It's been my main browser under XP for the past couple of years but it crashes 5 or so times daily. It's a good idea they put a stable browser first.
Heh, I've had less problems with IE.

It's probably a problem at your end. I've got Firefox on my work PC running XP and my home PC with 7RC and I've never had it crash.

 

[peter02l]

I am not taking issue with the order in which the choices appear,

I am looking at the descriptions for each choice. First of all Microsoft's is the longest. Second, the wording presents a choice of :

looks -Safari
new -Chrome
better -Mozilla
innovation -Opera

And then,

better, faster, safer, easier -IE 8.0

See you get more benefits from IE 8.0!

 

[lamadude]

This is just an example of EU competition policy, which is usually stricter than their US counterpart. All kinds of companies have gotten big fines because of collusion or abuse of a dominant market position. French yogurt companies, Dutch breweries, elevator makers, intel, and of course Microsoft.
You can debate over which approach is the better, the US or the EU version, but in the end, if you want to sell your product in the EU you need to follow EU laws, just like you follow US or Chinese laws in those countries. Nobody is forcing Microsoft to sell anything in the EU, but since it is their biggest market of course they don't want to pull out.

 

[9822737]

This is one of those stupid things that actually makes me feel bad for Microsoft... here they are finally agreeing to let the users choose what browser they want, and they put them in Alphabetical order as to not be accused of playing favorites, and still people go out of their way to find a flaw in it....

Completely agree with that, I actually feel sorry for MS! They are in no way showing favouritism to their own browser, the opposite in fact.

AnDy

 

[KnightWRX]

Completely agree with that, I actually feel sorry for MS! They are in no way showing favouritism to their own browser, the opposite in fact.

AnDy

Yes, they are. Look at the description, the fact that it is the center position, etc... Internet Explorer is very dominant on that page.

If they weren't showing any favoritism for their browsers, the descriptions would have been written by Apple, Google, Mozilla and Opera for their own browsers and the marketing speak would reach ludicrous levels on that page.

And if they really were serious about offering a choice, there would be 4 on that page, and after scrolling you'd see the mention :

... Or you can continue to use Internet Explorer by clicking here (expert users) : [Install]

Why do I say that ? Because their Trident engine is so far behind the other browsers that until they catch up, it's not a proper choice at all for the average user and the good of the Web in general.

 

[Terminal.app]

The main point of contention here is that MSFT has 90% of the market, and the EU's claim is that because they bundle their own product with the OS, they are gaining unfair advantage using their OS monopoly to form and maintain a browser monopoly.

Usually, anti-trust requires that they have a monopoly first in one market before you can claim they are leveraging their monopoly to create new ones.

If Apple was the one with 90% market share, I can bet you that Apple would come under fire for the same thing if they didn't let OEM partners replace Safari during the install with something else and make it default.

The real thing that kickstarted this whole mess was back in the Win98 days because OEMs wanted to replace IE, MSFT said no, and governments started investigating.

Not to mention the fact that Apple has been waking up lately and adopting many open-source technologies, while MS continues to try and push their own proprietary standards crap on everyone. WebKit was the best thing to ever happen to web browsers, but MS shuns it.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

If they weren't showing any favoritism for their browsers, the descriptions would have been written by Apple, Google, Mozilla and Opera for their own browsers and the marketing speak would reach ludicrous levels on that page.

l.

Umm those little description you see under the web browser were not made my Microsoft.

Go digging though the some of the sayings about each one and look not to far in the past and you will noticed that each saying was pulled from the browsers advertisements.

Firefox's saying I have seen multiple times during the development of firefox.
Safari--- description.. Very apple saying to me. Hell go to apple.com and you will see right below the download link "See the web in a whole new way...."

Opera I seen a saying like that when I was getting Opera mobile 5 for my blackberry.

This just goes to show you that the description for each were pulled from the marketing sayings from each browser. The only reason IE is longer than the others is it has ALWAYS been longer than the sayings of the others.

 

[picataggio]

Really. F the EU

First let me state up front I own 4 Mac's and love them all.

I am completely offended that the EU is even putting this restriction on MS. Who is next, Linux Distro's, Apple and so forth.

We use PC's at the office and I can give a crap about which Web Browser I use to be honest with you. On a MS Operating system I will IE because of the great Integration on a MAC I will use Safari for the same exact reason.

On each machine I have a copy of FIrefox for those just in case web sites that do not seem to work with Safari or IE.

I even have a Ubuntu Laptop and guess what on that machine I use FIREFOX.

So the EU can kiss my ARZ. Do not dictate **** to me.

By all means MS you know whats under your hood better then I and if you can integrate IE tighter than Safari can by all means go ahead.

Should the EU dictate what brand Radio Ford put in their Trucks or Car's?

Or how about letting the EU dictate condoms. After all I think Trojan is the biggest selling brand in the world, that seems like a monopoly. To be fair they need to give other choices on the packaging after you rip the box open.

 

[Toe]

Ballot actually favors Firefox

Look at the shelves in any retail store. The products go up in price as you look to your right. That is because most people tend to tend toward the products on the right.

However, people sometimes avoid things on either extreme (ie, the ends).

So the most prominently-placed product on this ballot is in fact... Firefox.

 

[KALLT]

Look at the shelves in any retail store. The products go up in price as you look to your right. That is because most people tend to tend toward the products on the right.

I could give you dozens of examples where this is not the case, so I don’t think this is something Microsoft thought about.

 

[KnightWRX]

Umm those little description you see under the web browser were not made my Microsoft.

Go digging though the some of the sayings about each one and look not to far in the past and you will noticed that each saying was pulled from the browsers advertisements.

Firefox's saying I have seen multiple times during the development of firefox.
Safari--- description.. Very apple saying to me. Hell go to apple.com and you will see right below the download link "See the web in a whole new way...."

Opera I seen a saying like that when I was getting Opera mobile 5 for my blackberry.

This just goes to show you that the description for each were pulled from the marketing sayings from each browser. The only reason IE is longer than the others is it has ALWAYS been longer than the sayings of the others.

So you're saying Microsoft just went around and picked whatever they felt like ? And you're saying this is fair ? Meanwhile, you doubt that the little paragraph under IE went through a thorough approval process in Marketing before being included ?

Get real. Just look at Chrome's description. A new browser for windows. Wow I'm in awe and want to try it . For Apple, they ripped off the HTML title of Safari's page instead of going for the much more marketing speak little paragraph on the banner.

Seriously, if they were being fair, a simple e-mail to each company saying "submit a 10 word description of your browser for inclusion on the ballot, you have 20 days" would've been fair. As it stands, it's obvious they just made their browser stand out more than the others.

 

[AidenShaw]

I could give you dozens of examples where this is not the case, so I don’t think this is something Microsoft thought about.

Some Microsoft.com web pages that list partner applications use random ordering - refresh the page and the icons move.

For example: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/antivirus-partners/windows-7.aspx