With news that Microsoft will not be shipping new Windows 7 PCs with Internet Explorer (the Microsoft-written browser) preinstalled in Europe, it looks like the “browser wars” are going to hot up.
The reason is that the European Commission has ruled that it is anti-competitive for Microsoft to ship its own browser with the Windows operating system.
Of course, many people don’t even know or care what browser they use – to them, you click on the blue “e” and start using the internet.
Firefox is the browser of choice for many
But to web designers and developers, the curse of Internet Explorer in its earlier incarnations (including the infamously hard-to-write-for IE6) still leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and even the vastly improved IE8 (the current version) is not, it is fair to say, seen as the browser of choice.
That award goes to Firefox. Due to the amazing number of useful “plug ins” that can do all kinds of weird and wonderful things, as well as its fast performance and other advantages, it is giving Internet Explorer a real run for its money, not only among “techies” but the general public too.
A choice of browsers
The European Commission ruling means that many non-technical folk may well get their first taste of Firefox, as they will have a choice of browsers and will be able to download the one they wish to try. No doubt Microsoft will make it easy to download their own, but presumably the European Commission ruling means that they would also have to give easy access to the alternatives to.
Another winner may well be Google, whose Chrome browser – while only currently being used by a tiny minority of people – is well liked and surely must feature heavily in Google’s plans for the future. (Whether a world dominated by Google would be better than one dominated by Microsoft is certainly open to debate.)
Whatever happens, this is a definite blow for Internet Explorer, which was slowly ceding ground to the competition anyway before this ruling and will no doubt now do so even faster, at least in Europe.
Tags: browsers, chrome, firefox, internet explorer, microsoft