Opera Files Antitrust Suit Against Microsoft

Regeneration · Posted by Regeneration on December 13th, 2007, 07:15 PM

Opera Software has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer Web browser to Windows, the Norwegian company said Thursday. The complaint, which was filed with the European Commission on Wednesday, says Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the desktop PC market by offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows, and hindering interoperability by not following accepted standards with IE.

Opera is asking the Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows, or include other browsers as a standard part of its operating system. It also wants it to require Microsoft to adhere to industry standards with its Web browser. The issue of standards is seen as important because if all Web browsers do not use the same standards, Web site developers are likely to design their Web sites to work with the most widely-used browser, which is Internet Explorer. That gives people a disincentive to use other browsers.

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**Posted by Unixlord on December 13th, 2007, 07:41 PM**

ive always foudn that annoying about IE, certain things that work in other browsers dont work in IE and so you gotta try to taylor make your page to work with it, which is agrivating and usually limiting, im glad Opera is taking a shot at em and bringing this suit, i would love to see IE bite the dust, wrothless browser.