Posted on 05/25/2004 7:10:09 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
Microsoft agreed to pay Norway's Opera Software $12.75 million to head off a threatened lawsuit over code that made some Web pages on MSN look bad in certain versions of Opera's Web browser, CNET News.com has learned.
Opera disclosed the payment last week in a terse press release that omitted other details, including the name of the settling party and the nature of the dispute.
But a source indicated that the payment came from Microsoft in order to close the books on a clash over obscure interoperability problems. On at least three separate occasions, Opera has accused Microsoft of deliberately breaking interoperability between its MSN Web portal and various versions of the Opera browser--charges that the software giant has repeatedly denied.
A Microsoft representative said the company does not comment on rumors.
Reached by phone, Opera executives refused to name the company involved in the settlement or describe the nature of the legal claims, citing a confidentiality agreement.
"We forwarded a few facts to a big international corporation and settled before we took legal action," Opera Chief Technology Officer Hakon Lie said Tuesday. "This resolves an issue very close to my heart."
The deal marks the latest in a string of settlements from Microsoft, which is seeking to simplify its business by clearing up potentially damaging legal claims. In the past year, the company has agreed to pay billions of dollars to wrap up litigation with Sun Microsystems, digital rights management developer InterTrust and Time Warner's Netscape Communications division, among others.
While the Opera payment is relatively tiny, it underscores ongoing ripple effects in the browser market that stem from the overwhelming dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Having used its desktop operating system monopoly to help trounce its primary rival Netscape, Microsoft has effectively abandoned significant browser development efforts. That's left companies with negligible market share such as Opera and Netscape's Mozilla open-source project to lead innovation in the field.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
| 2004 | IE 6 | IE 5 | O 7 | Moz | NN 3 | NN 4 | NN 7 |
| May | 72.6% | 9.7% | 2.1% | 10.7% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 1.4% |
| April | 72.4% | 10.1% | 2.1% | 10.3% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 1.4% |
| March | 72.1% | 10.7% | 2.1% | 9.6% | 0.4% | 0.4% | 1.4% |
| February | 71.5% | 11.5% | 2.2% | 9.0% | 0.4% | 0.4% | 1.5% |
| January | 71.3% | 12.8% | 2.1% | 8.2% | 0.4% | 0.5% | 1.5% |
| 2003 | IE 6 | IE 5 | O 7 | Moz | NN 3 | NN 4 | NN 7 |
| November | 71.2% | 13.7% | 1.9% | 7.2% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 1.6% |
| September | 69.7% | 16.9% | 1.8% | 6.2% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 1.5% |
| July | 66.9% | 20.3% | 1.7% | 5.7% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 1.5% |
| May | 65.0% | 22.7% | 1.4% | 4.6% | 1.0% | 0.9% | 1.4% |
| March | 63.4% | 24.6% | 1.2% | 4.2% | 0.9% | 1.1% | 1.4% |
| January | 55.3% | 29.3% | 4.0% | 1.2% | 1.7% | 1.1% | |
| 2002 | IE 6 | IE 5 | IE 4 | AOL | NN 3 | NN 4 | NN 5+ |
| November | 53.5% | 29.9% | 5.2% | 1.1% | 2.0% | 4.9% | |
| September | 49.1% | 34.4% | 4.5% | 1.3% | 2.2% | 4.5% | |
| July | 44.4% | 40.1% | 0.5% | 3.5% | 1.2% | 2.6% | 3.5% |
| May | 40.7% | 46.0% | 0.7% | 2.8% | 1.2% | 3.4% | 2.7% |
| March | 36.7% | 49.4% | 0.7% | 3.0% | 1.2% | 4.1% | 2.4% |
| January | 30.1% | 55.7% | 1.0% | 2.8% | 1.3% | 4.4% | 2.2% |
| IE | Internet Explorer |
| AOL | America Online * |
| Moz | Mozilla |
| O | Opera |
| NN | Netscape |
End stats on your list: Opera use more than doubled. Mozilla use more than tripled. Total IE use declined. People are realizing IE sucks and are finding better alternatives. Microsoft doesn't like that, especially with Opera's threatening position on the handheld market.
And that's just considering your study, which looks suspicious. A real study of browser usage should have results adding up to over 100% since many people use multiple browsers. For example, I use IE at work and Mozilla at home, and sometimes IE at home for testing web sites (to make sure my code isn't too complex for its broken rendering). I consider Mozilla to be my main broswer, but anything I do from work would also count for IE.
While I'm not conceeding this was "underhanded", a lie, or disparaging, please post the specific causes of action and their authority.
By purposely breaking Opera
There was no "breaking" of anything.
Microsoft tried to make those users with Opera think their browser was broken, casting doubt on the functionality and usability of that browser, which can be incentive for people to switch to a more "compatible" browser, such as IE.
This is called marketing. Ever heard commercials with the term "other leading ____" where there is a distinct picture of something that looks like the other company's product? Besides, Opera users are virtually by definition power users (computer novices don't know anything about Opera and don't download it; they use IE), even the below average Opera user knows exactly what is going on here and that it is limited to certain sites.
Such action is bad enough, but coming from a convicted monopolist known for anticompetitive behavior is that much worse.
Microsoft was never "convicted" of anything that I know of.
Dude, there are a LOT of reasons to diss MS. Some of their products are crappy and buggy (Word); they have licensing agreements that are driving many users to other options; they discontinue support of older apps, effectively forcing upgrades by people and companies that don't really want to upgrade; and their technical support has individuals that are less knowlegable than the average computer power user. I guarantee you I know more Word that 90% of the Word tech support people. I have never, ever, gotten a helpful response from Microsoft support.
But making things up by saying stuff like this is illegal makes you, not Microsoft, look silly. If you want to use this as a reason to not purchase MS products, and encourage others to follow, go for it. I might actually support you. But saying this stuff is illegal is ridiculous.
If you'd take the time to read the files, you'd know they were far more than a bug. The whole thing is crafted to look bad, while doing nothing would have left the page rendering perfectly.
But since you dweebs hate MS to the point of frothing at the mouth over every bug, I'm hardly surprised.
If someone had five convictions for burglary and you found him on the premises of burglary in progress, would you automatically assume he's perfectly innocent, or would his past create a strong likelihood he's involved?
This isn't Google, which puts ethics at the forefront of everything they do. This is Microsoft, convicted monopolist on two continents and payer of billions in settlements due to unethical and illegal conduct.
Proof. Microsoft's policy is to violate wherever profitable in the long run and payoff when necessary, as long as they make more money in the end. Raising doubt about Opera could have hurt Opera's marketshare (they are a company that can be put out of business) and derailed its goals of being a large marketshare holder in the handheld device market.
Means, motive, opportunity. All there.
100% growth. Calculate that out for a few more years and see if that threatens Microsoft's position. And don't forget the handheld market, where MS doesn't have majority and Opera is poised to claim a large marketshare. Microsoft needs Opera to look bad.
I take it you didn't look. That's why you don't know how different the pages were.
Ah, but you're going well beyond presumption. You've already convicted MS.
Oh, I would love for this to go to trial for a conviction because I know that's what they'd get. BTW, I suppose in your mind Saddam Hussein is absolutely innocent of torture, rape, murder and use of chemical weapons on his own people.
This is the same Google that considers search engine optimization bad -- but doesn't hesitate to give preference to its own ads.
Google tries to paint a true picture of what's on the web, so it tries to deny people with optimization knowledge better ranking despite the site's actual popularity. Google never sold search rankings and all ads are prominently labelled as ads.
Now if you want to go into what Microsoft has done, that's going to be a very, very long post.
Look, I'm not going to waste any more time on an anti-MS activist such as yourself. You're hopelessly confused.
And you're hopelessly blinded by your loyalty to a convicted monopolist. Good day.
That was standard overreaction by idiot politicians who need an issue to campaign on and a reason to pass another useless law. All of their issues are pure political grandstanding. Google was up front in the beginning about every aspect of this free service that gives you a gig of storage. You pay for such generous service by accepting automated scanning of emails that puts separate ads on the page depending on the detected words. You know, kind of the way you already get clearly labelled ads when you search for a term.
I didn't have any problems with Passport from a privacy perspective. The only thing I was afraid of was MS tying Windows use to Passport registration.
The worst part of this: all of you are complaining about the privacy implications of a free service that isn't even out yet.
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